The first Latino president?

*This article produced a minor cyber-quake this morning. So much was revealed about President Obama’s politics and how Latinos view him, and also about the parallel cyber universe.

Obama’s Labor Secretary, Tom Perez, mentioned that he thought Obama was the first “Latino” president, much like Clinton was the first “black” president – referring to his policies and standing in the community. There were corners of the interwebs where the blow-back was quick and harsh, par for the course for Facebook comments and such. But I wonder … so what?

The Secretary of Labor gushed over his boss, and folks shot back in a staccato comment stream. Pointless outrage aside, and accepting the fact that we now know how people online feel about Obama being called the first “Latino” president … what?

Well, here’s what: politics is schizo, and the internet can be a political stream of consciousness. Is Obama the Derpoter in Chief or the first Latino President? Yes, depending on who’s talking (ranting, really, but that’s fodder for another day).

The serious question is how does this change things? Or, what’s new? He deported millions, more than any other president, and his standing among Latinos is still high (10 points higher after his Cuba announcement).

It’s been my experience that most folks react to a headline in a news stream, and don’t read the linked article. So maybe a better headline would have read: Labor Secretary says Obama is the first Latino president. It’s a truer depiction of the article. It probably wouldn’t have tampered the emotions online, but the emotion may have been better directed.

Ah, the internet. Give a guy a computer and wifi … I said looking in a mirror. VL

By Edward-Isaac Dovere, Politico

Bill Clinton was the first black president. Thursday afternoon, taking in the Cuba thaw after weeks buoyed by President Barack Obama’s immigration reform executive actions, Labor Secretary Tom Perez put down a new marker for his own boss.

“When I reflect on the breadth and depth of what he has done for Latinos, it really makes him in my mind, and in the minds of so many others, the first Latino president,” said Perez, the son of Dominican immigrants and one of the administration’s highest-ranking Latinos.

Perez isn’t alone in that assessment. But many Latinos aren’t ready to go that far. But they’re starting to move. Obama’s approval rating shot up among Latinos since the executive action announcement, and the change in Cuba policy is a reminder of just how much politics have shifted: Most older Cubans rage against lifting the embargo, while most younger Cubans track with the American public in supporting what Obama did — not to mention that Cubans now make up only 3.5 percent of the country’s Hispanic population. But polls show non-Cuban Hispanics support normalizing relations with Cuba by far greater margins.

Click HERE to read the full story.

[Photo by The White House/Flickr]

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