Appointing Katherine Archuleta to be political director of the Obama re-election campaign is a brilliant move

I have had the pleasure of serving with and under her in the Pena administration when he was Mayor of Denver. Katherine later served as chief of staff to three cabinet members in the Clinton and Obama administrations. Not only does she have impressive administrative talent, her greatest skill is in organizing and strategizing political campaigns.   She should be credited with intense voter registration and getting out the Hispanic vote drives that caused Colorado and other southwestern states to change from red to blue in 2008 and which carried over to Democratic Senate wins as well in 2010. Katherine will be helped by the propensity of the GOP in these critical swing states of the southwest to take the hardest line possible on immigration and wasting  any gains in that community Bush had made with his more reasonable approach to comprehensive immigration reforms.
It is easy to see where the Obama campaign is heading by dramatizing the fact that his stimulus saved the US auto industry in the rust belt and by zeroing in on the Hispanic vote in the Southwest. Both areas will be critical swings in the 2012 election. By contrast, the GOP fought the auto bailout and has appeared to be anti Hispanic with unreasonable hard line immigration policies.