Sunday, September 07, 2014

Worth nothing

Chris Cillizza literally phoning it in:

You can tell by the extraneous h in the parenthesis in line 4, which must have been produced by an Autocorrect gremlin making fun of Chris's portentous style.

I'm wondering how much President Obama has really thought at all about the political consequences of delaying his immigration action until after the election—beyond simply believing whatever Mark Pryor tells him.

It's not only the demoralizing effect on the Latino community, which the Democrats have decided isn't worth worrying about in 2014, since only one of the key Senate races, Colorado's, is in a state with a crucial Hispanic population (they've apparently given up on the House of Representatives, even though Steve Israel and his friends are sending me ten emails a day insisting that they haven't and all they need to win is $3 from me).

It's the way it encourages the worst rightwing fantasies of what Obama might actually have in mind: "I'm definitely going to do it, but I'll wait until after the election." Really? He's afraid to do it until we vote? It must be as bad as Steve King says it is! Plot to implement sharia!

It's like the implementation of the Affordable Care Act being stretched out over four years (now five with the delay on the employer mandate), creating a huge space for people to pollute with lies about what it contained, which they continue to believe today. It's no coincidence Cillizza calls that "the big example of federal overreach", because that's what the Village thinks, being uninterested in its success in reducing the uninsured rate or cutting medical costs because that's just so wonky.

The plan as far as we know, to give temporary residence and work permission to as many as 5 million adults already living in the US who are parents of US citizens and Dreamers (while at the same time hastening the deportations of all those refugee children back to the gang-terrorized streets of Tegucigalpa to show how "tough" we are), is far more modest than the Senate bill the Chamber of Commerce and Evangelical community were supporting last spring, which would give a chance to all 11 million undocumented aliens.

If Obama had signed the order back in June, giving the press and the population a few months to deal with the reality of the plan instead of paranoid fantasies about it, including lots of video of sweet and overjoyed families, how much effect would that have had on Mark Pryor's campaign? How much effect did the original Dreamer order in June 2012 have on that year's elections? Other than to make Marco Rubio very uncomfortable and thirsty?

2012 Senate elections, via Wikipedia, dull colors retentions and bright colors gains. How many seats did Democrats lose because of Obama's tyrannical amnesty order? Really, Nebraska? (I don't mean to belittle the difficulties for Democrats of this year's Senate election; I just don't see how this move makes them any better.)
Cross-posted at The Rectification of Names.

1 comment:

Victor said...

I was always of two minds on what the President should do.

I want him to take action.
But when?

I thought if he was going to do it, he should have done it much earlier in the year.
Some people might have gone ballistic - but they're going to go ballistic no matter when. They are bigoted @$$holes.

And, after a few months, I think most people would have seen that the action the President took didn't dramatically change the country - just the situations of millions of immigrants.

Now, less than two months until the midterm, I don't think is the right time.

Let him do whatever he plans to do a week or so after Election Day.
Maybe on Thanksgiving morning - just to piss-off the bigots, and hopefully they'll choke to death on dry turkey breast meat.