1	In the News From politics to art, the headlines of Hispanidad. read more...
2	UPFRONT Ruben Navarrette, Jr. Hispanics as a commodity in politics. read more...
3	Dr. Eduardo Padrón Charting a new course toward prosperity. read more...

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Que Paso? Hispanics were supposed to be a Hot commodity in the 2008 election. One political analyst even dubbed them the new soccer moms, a voting bloc sought after by both parties.

But somewhere along the line, things cooled off considerably. People stopped calling. Parties stopped courting. Suddenly, no one cared about the Hispanic vote. And maybe they never did.
All the pundits are talking about is how the new must-have constituency is “blue collar voters.” And don’t kid yourselves. They don’t mean working class people with brown skin. The phrase “blue collar voters” is code for working class whites.
That’s not how the script read. In February, during an appearance on the Spanish-language radio show hosted by Eddie “El Piolín” Sotelo, former president Bill Clinton—no doubt aware of the fact that Hillary was winning Hispanic voters by a 2-to-1 margin—predicted that Hispanics would “determine the nominee of the Democratic Party and the next president of the United States.”
Since then, America’s largest minority has been wooed by enough mariachis to fill a football stadium, and offered enough chips and salsa to feed a small village. Yet, in between serenades and snacks, Hispanics have played the role of the piñata. They’ve been hit—from Right and Left—with bursts of neglect, nativism, condescension, divisiveness and even charges of racism. And they’ve watched their own leaders attacked, belittled and dismissed as irrelevant by Republicans and Democrats alike.
One minute, Hispanics are fawned over; the next, they’re marginalized. One minute, they’re told they’re special swing voters concentrated in battleground states; the next, they’re told they’re not that special after all. One minute, the parties are dying to talk to them; the next, they get the feeling no one is listening. Like when all but one of the GOP presidential candidates, Rep. Duncan Hunter, skipped a debate sponsored by the National Association of Latino Elected Officials. Or when, later, all but one, John McCain, sat out a debate on Spanish-language television, forcing its postponement. Or when Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO), perhaps the most nativist lawmaker in Congress, compared Miami to a “third world country” leading to the cancellation of campaign events in the city after someone called in a bomb threat.
Or when, on the Democratic side of the aisle, Hillary Clinton quipped to a mostly Hispanic audience in Las Vegas that Americans needed to start thinking of our problems as interconnected as “chips and guacamole.” Or when Hispanics who backed Clinton were accused of being racist and anti-black for not supporting Obama. Or how Bill Richardson left the Democratic contest and endorsed Obama, the New Mexico governor was publicly blasted as a Judas by loyal Clintonista James Carville.
It’s enough to make Hispanics miss the dark days when they were written off by one major party and taken for granted by the other. In the 1960s, Democrats in enclaves like South Texas would woo Mexican-American voters with nothing more elaborate than a plate of tacos and a couple of beers, while Republicans didn’t think they deserved even that much since they were probably going to vote Democrat anyway.
It’s taken as a given that, today, Hispanics are treated much better. But are they really? What Hispanics haven’t seen much of in recent months is the one thing they crave: respect. Respeto.
After all, these are people who have, in some cases, been in this country for five or six generations. They have started businesses, made payrolls, paid mortgages, put kids through college, joined the military, paid taxes, made sacrifices, etc. They deserve some attention. They deserve to count and to have their voices heard.
And now that the presidential primaries are over and the nominees of both parties have been chosen—John McCain for the Republicans, and Barack Obama for the Democrats—it’s time to look at what went wrong and take stock.
Or better yet, take names.

Ruben Navarrette, Jr. is a member of the editorial board of the San Diego Union Tribune, a nationally syndicated columnist, a popular speaker and a regular commentator at CNN.com.