Obama's Open Flank

One of the dirty little secrets that has not been fully addressed by the Obama campaign nor the media is Obama's problem with Latinos--a bloc that could be easily exploited over the illegal immigrant issue (a major reason McCain is on the fence on border control).

The estrangement was on display earlier this week:

While Senator Obama worked a warm audience at the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Miami this week-end, protesting Bush and Mc Cain's “tax-cuts for the wealthy” and promising billions in federal hand-outs, a small group of Cuban-Americans stood outside the Intercontinental protesting Obama himself.

More specifically, they protested some of Obama's top advisers: Gregory Craig, who serves as Obama's chief advisor on Latin America, and Erich Holder, who heads Obama's vice-presidential selection team. Both of these gentlemen had key roles in “legally” perfuming the shanghaiing of Elian Gonzalez. At the time, Craig served as lawyer for Elain's (sic) father, (i.e Fidel Castro), and Holder served as Deputy Attorney General under Janet Reno.

"That was eight years ago,” Obama responded when plans for the Cuban-American protest were announced last week. “Obviously it was a wrenching situation for the families, but I'm running for president in 2008 and my focus is: how do we create a Cuba policy that will create political freedom on that island and allow the people who live there to prosper?"

Granted, that was eight years ago but it still is an open wound to many in the Cuban community. A child was sent to an island prison run by a despot against the wishes of his dead mother and her living family. He was sent with a gun to his head and he was sent because of the actions of two of Obama's advisers. That's not very appealing to the Cuban-Americans in Miami. Besides, exactly what timeframe are we allowed to re-visit, five years, seven years? That would leave McCain's history with the Keating Five off-limits, would it not?

But that's just one case of Hispanics challenging the Obama campaign. The secret that no one speaks about yet is a known fact for those who live in areas of large Hispanic populations is that many Hispanics just plain don't like African-Americans and vice-versa. They've been living in the inner cities with one another for decades but have never quite learned to trust each other.

Without the Hispanic-American vote, Obama will have a difficult time in battleground states such as New Mexico and Colorado and having two major players in the Elian Gonzalez tragedy working for you probably isn't going to help.

I leave you with this, an incident that shouldn't have happened that Craig and Holder were directly responsible for. I would say an incident that did much harm to our international standing: