Who loves Latinos...?

... everybody!  By everybody we mean, you know... all the candidates.  Obama and McCain have been going at Latinos like a drunk 45 year old goes at the youngest girl in the club and they've been pulling out all of the stops when it comes to courting them.  Both candidates recently spoke to the major Latino/Hispanic advocacy organization National Council of La Raza.  They threw around such buzz words and phrases as "hemispheric free trade," "immigration reform." and "health care benefits." 
2 interesting things about the campaigning the candidates are doing towards Hispanic people.  1.) they are having to highlight policies that will affect non-voters just as much as they affect voters.  Both candidates have cited the importance of having a way for non-citizen workers to become citizens.  2.) the candidates apparently feel like to appeal to Latino voters they have to do more to improve the group's countries of origin.  McCain keeps mentioning his recent visits to Colombia and Mexico every chance he can, saying that it has helped him to "understand" the importance of supporting growth in other countries in our hemisphere.
This is all because the Hispanic vote seems to be so up in the air and in this election it might represent about 10% of total voters.  When Bush was first elected, 40% of Hispanic voters voted for him, but in this year's primaries 78% of Hispanic voters voted Democrat.  It might seem like Obama has it in the bag, but many of the Hispanic Democrat votes went to Clinton and, unlike other ethnic groups, Hispanic voters don't seem to vote along party lines.  They seem to vote for whoever they think is saying the right thing at the right time, so apparently the candidates' strategies are to say a lot to Hispanic voters all of the time and hope that they get some of it right.