Today, presidential candidate Al Gore and Republican hopeful George W. Bush have gone out of their way to do the same. Bush has been especially impressive, speaking easily in lightly accented but fluid and folksy Spanish. U.S. demographics are changing, and the parties and politicians must adapt. Muslims now outnumber Jews. Hispanics already may outnumber blacks.
Political identification continues to change.
Blacks overwhelmingly voted Republican until Franklin D. Roosevelt introduced the New Deal, and Lyndon B. Johnson captured them with his civil-rights policies and Great Society entitlements. Bush is trying to reclaim Hispanics with a message of opportunity. Hispanics are changing the political and cultural face of the continent like no other immigrant group since the English landed at Plymouth Rock. Though many in the Southwest trace their American roots centuries back to the Spanish conquest, Hispanics just have begun to make a mark nationally as they move out of the ethnic communities where their forebears married and raised their families. As they join a mainstream society from which they had largely excluded themselves, they are keeping their heritage and to a lesser degree their language.