Strictly off-limits: Gun control is one of the issues that the presidential candidates refused to talk about.
Despite the billions of dollars spent in the American general election, despite the thousands of TV advertisements aired over the eight months or so of tough campaigning, despite the four and a half hours of debates that the candidates had in front of prime-time audiences numbering over 100 million, there were still many very important issues for the United States from which both candidates for president shied away. Far from being the cathartic purging of the nation's mind and soul that this election was presented as in the popular consciousness, there are vital areas of American public life that received next to no attention on the hustings of either side, for very persuasive — if entirely cynical — reasons.
Take immigration: there are estimated to be more than 11 million illegal immigrants living in the US, which has a huge effect on the economy, both for good and ill. The Republican party's official position is the farcical one of supporting what Mitt Romney in January called "self-deportation", i.e. hoping the illegals will turn themselves in, although in some states the Republicans are far tougher, supporting non-consensual deportation.
One of the biggest issues in American politics over the past year has been Arizona's use of police stop-and-search to crack down on illegals, yet a glance at the demographic make-up of several key swing states makes it immediately clear why neither side talked about the issue at the hustings. New Mexico is 46 per cent Hispanic by population, Arizona is 29.6 per cent, Nevada 26.5 per cent, Florida 22.5 per cent and Colorado 20.7 per cent. Together these states represent no fewer than 59 electoral votes, out of the 270 a candidate needs to win the White House.
Yet if the Republicans didn't want to alienate Hispanics in these key states, why didn't the Democrats bang the immigration drum on the other side, hoping to scare the Latino voters into their camp by summoning up the fear of deportation? The answer is that they feared that by so doing they might have driven the white voters in those five states into the hands of the Republicans. Consider that in Barack Obama's 2012 State of the Union speech, a grand total of 195 words were dedicated to the immigration issue, out of a total of 6,000 words, or 3.25 per cent, concerning a massive issue that is threatening to bankrupt several of those states where the undocumented illegals live and work.
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