Immigration Issues in the General Election

I love writing about the Presidential election. Everybody's talking about it, everybody's analyzing. I haven't got much to add to all the blah blah blah. I'll just summarize, so I can jump ahead and talk about immigration.

The Democrats - Obama is giving Hillary a major tussle, making her work much harder for the nomination than she ever expected. She's using money and resources she really hoped to save for the general election. Ultimately she's gonna get the nomination, and her political instincts will tell her that Obama is popular and useful, and she will need him on board in just the right way. She will need him for a big turnout that does not cause a backlash turnout.

The Republicans - McCain cannot be stopped. If Romney seemed like a nice guy, we'd all be feeling sorry for what McCain and Huckabee are doing to him. However, he's basically an unlikeable, rich guy who's kinda creepy, so nobody is rallying behind him. McCain is going to get a lot of Democrats crossing over to him, and his challenge is to get the backbone Republicans to turn out for him. Can he do it?

That's it in a nutshell.

I have promised to analyze the Hispanic voters likely impact on the election. They are not presently galvanized behind one candidate. In case nobody noticed, there WAS a Hispanic candidate on the Democrat side, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson....BILL RICHARDSON!?!?!?

He's not galvanizing anybody.


A better choice would have been Victor Sifuentes.












Actually, the Hispanic influence in the general election is going to be hard to predict, for a few reasons:

1. Will they be motivated for a high turnout?
2. Will they be motivated by any particular issue or candidate to vote in a bloc?
3. Are they concentrated in key contested States?
4. Will either candidate figure out the proper appeal?

Here's a link to an interesting piece in the 2/5/08 Wall Street Journal.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120217267552142823.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

The fascinating premiss of this piece is that the the strident anti-immigrant positions taken by the non-McCain Republicans are not resonating with voters, including Republicans. When I've heard the candidates (and conservative talk-radio hosts) railing about McCain's "amnesty bill", I wondered if voters were buying it. I think they are not, and they will not.

How will the immigration issue play out between McCain and Hillary?

More tomorrow.....