I haven't decided yet. I get to vote for Bernie in the primary, so maybe I won't write him in in Nov. So far, I've always voted for the Dem in the first term, and somebody else in the second.
Morning Plum: Hillary pokes GOP’s hornet’s nest on immigration
By Greg Sargent May 5 at 9:20 AM
As your humble blogger has argued before, one of the under-appreciated stories of 2016 is that likely Dem nominee Hillary Clinton has already embraced much of President Obama’s agenda. With the GOP candidates all pledging, to varying degrees, to roll back whatever parts of that agenda are realized, and opposing elements of it that still hang in the balance, many basic contrasts for 2016 are in place.
Today Clinton will deepen that contrast on an issue that has potentially far-reaching demographic implications for the 2016 battle: Immigration. In remarks today at an event with DREAMers and immigration activists, Clinton will say:
Undocumented immigrants must have a chance for full citizenship under overhaul of the immigration system, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton will demand Tuesday.
“The standard for a true solution is nothing less than a full and equal path to citizenship,” Clinton’s campaign said in a preview of remarks she is expected to give during a visit to a largely Hispanic high school here.
“She will say that we cannot settle for proposals that provide hard-working people with merely a second-class status,” the campaign said.
A number of observers are pointing out that this aligns Clinton with the “left” side of the Democratic Party. This is not really right. In fact, the Democratic Party is more unified in favor of immigration reform than it has ever been, due in part to the increasing importance of Latinos to the party, and in keeping with the party’s broader shift on the priorities that matter to the emerging coalition that has driven Dem victories in recent national elections — nonwhites, millennials, and socially liberal college educated whites.
Clinton’s speech today suggests she sees holding that coalition as crucial, as does her recent rhetoric on police reform, on gay rights, and on climate change, perhaps at the expense of the culturally conservative blue collar whites who used to matter more to Dem electoral chances.
Clinton’s speech will be short on specifics. But it seems likely Clinton will ultimately embrace a framework similar to the one in the Senate bill, which trades massive investments in border security for a path to citizenship, the trade-off (security for legalization) most likely to produce actual bipartisan reform.
On this score, keep an eye on how the GOP candidates — particularly Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio — react to Clinton’s speech. Bush has genuinely challenged his own party by preposterously claiming the moral plight of undocumented immigrants is complex and that they may have something positive to contribute to American society. And he’s supported legalization. But at the same time, he’s gravitated towards what might be called a “safe zone” for GOP candidates on immigration: Insisting the border must be secured first (without explaining by what metric) before any kind of legalization can happen.
Meanwhile, Rubio — the GOP’s Great Latino Hope — helped champion the Senate bill, but he’s since retreated to that same safe zone. And Scott Walker has retreated even further, to a place where he’s flirting with limits on legal immigration.
The likes of Bush and Rubio will likely respond to Clinton’s speech by reiterating vague support for legalization but on the condition the border is secured first. In the long run, it seems obvious both Bush and Rubio have a very credible shot at doing better than Mitt Romney did among Latinos. But for now, Clinton’s citizenship gauntlet could help deepen the contrast between the parties in ways that favor Democrats. And here’s something else that could really help on that score: Clinton will probably express support for Obama’s executive actions shielding millions from deportations — which the eventual GOP presidential nominee will almost certainly have pledged to roll back.
washingtonpost.com |
