In final pitch to Latinos, Clinton paints grim picture of a Trump presidency
Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are making their final pitches to voters. A New CBS News/New York Times Poll shows Clinton leads Trump by three points nationally, down from a nine-point margin a couple of weeks ago. Only eight percent of voters say they have not made up their minds.
Clinton campaigned Wednesday in Arizona, a typically Republican-leaning state. But it’s also 30 percent Latino, and one of three key states where Latino turnout could determine the outcome, as polls show Trump’s comments have driven even more of them into Clinton’s camp, reports CBS News correspondent Nancy Cordes.
“We have a real chance to turn this state blue again,” Clinton told a crowd of 15,000 outside Phoenix.
The Democratic nominee told them that Trump’s immigration proposals would rip families apart.
“We Americans don’t like to see people treated like criminals or traitors or strangers because of their race or their religion,” she said.
Earlier in Las Vegas, she painted a grim picture of Trump in the White House.
“If you are Latino, you know what life would be like because we’d have a president who doesn’t see you as American,” Clinton said.
Her Latino support is showing up in Nevada’s early vote, where 43 percent of ballots cast have come from Democrats versus 37 percent from Republicans.
Patsy Mendes works at a Vegas nonprofit.
“Donald Trump is sp discriminatory against Hispanic people.Me, my entire family, we are going to go out there and vote,” Mendes said.
In Florida, Hispanic early voting is projected to be up 40 percent from 2012, which could help offset a dip in African American turnout.
Edwin Toro is one of about 1,000 Puerto Ricans who move to Florida each month. Toro believes anybody who is Puerto Rican will vote for Clinton.
And she’ll need them, because polls show the race tightening after the FBI resurrected the Clinton email investigation.
In an interview, President Obama criticized the FBI director for alerting Congress about new emails that may or may not be significant.
“I do think that there is a norm that when there are investigations we don’t operate on innuendo and we don’t operate on incomplete information and we don’t operate on leaks,” Obama said.
Until now, the White House has taken pains not to look like it’s taking sides in the campaign’s fight with the FBI. The president went a different route, arguing the FBI already concluded this summer that Clinton made a mistake by using a private server but didn’t do anything criminal.