Absent Edwards, Clinton and Obama Tack Rightward

by: Chris Bowers

Fri Feb 29, 2008 at 14:16

Titled "Winning The Immigration Debate," the study was put together by the Coalition for Comprehensive Immigration Reform and the Center for American Progress. Its findings, which have been sent to Capitol Hill and have been part of briefing sessions in both the House and the Senate, are based off of polling conducted by Peter Hart Research Associates.

Taken as a whole, the report presents a new prism through which the Democrats should approach the immigration debate. "It is unacceptable to have 12 million people in our country who are outside the system," it reads. "We must require illegal immigrants to become legal, and reform the laws so this can happen."

Polling for the study revealed that a larger swath of the public was supportive of "requiring" undocumented immigrants already in the country to normalize their status than there was for only offering them legalization as an option. In addition, the report pushes Democrats to argue that immigrants should be required to pay taxes, learn English, and pass criminal background checks to remain in the country. Those who have a criminal record should be deported. All of these policies were included in last year's immigration reform compromise legislation, which ultimately failed.

"Our view is that this argument threads the needle in favor of comprehensive reform in the most effective way," Jen Palmieri, communications chief for the Center for American Progress, told the Huffington Post.(...)

"There has been no consensus around the Democratic rhetoric in regard to immigration," said one party official who had knowledge of the report. "But it has usually been framed around opportunity, and it was less framed around this punishment rhetoric. We are going to require these people to become legal or we are going to deport [them]? It doesn't challenge the immigrant scapegoating direction of the conversation. It plays right into it."

In this campaign, neither Obama nor Clinton are making any attempts to transform American political discourse away from its current, conservative dominated conventional wisdom. Instead, they throw conservative jabs at each other about being too partisan, Harry and Louise, national security fearmongering, supposedly raising middle class taxes and, at some point, probably about coddling illegal immigrants (arguably, Clinton was already skewered on that back in late October at the Philly debate). This just is not transformative progressive politics from either camp. Right-wing frames are consistently being employed to attack Democrats.

Russ Feingold, who yesterday I characterized as the one clearly transformative progressive in the U.S. Senate, harshly criticized John Edwards for talking like a tough, transformative progressive, but not standing up to fight like one in the Senate. While that is a reasonable criticism of John Edwards, at least he was talking like a transformative progressive. In the current debate, I feel as though we are getting neither the talk nor the walk. Instead, apart from a few comments about NAFTA (which are bogus), mandates (when neither health care plan offers much of a progressive solution), and the AUMF vote on Iraq (which, while important, was also in the past), pretty much all we get are Clinton and Obama attacking each other from the right while reinforcing right-wing frames. It really sucks.

Even though I live in Pennsylvania, I kind of want the primary campaign to end on March 4th, mainly because I am sick of the right-wing jabs Obama and Clinton are throwing at each other, and because I'm tired of the Clinton campaign's long litany of states and voters that don't matter. However, maybe it is better that the primary continues on for another seven weeks, because otherwise the nominee might just shift even harder and faster to the right. At least during a Democratic primary there is the hope of having a progressive influence on Obama and Clinton. If the direction of the post-Edwards campaign has shown us anything, it is that progressives will probably have no leverage on Obama and Clinton whatsoever once the general election campaign begins. Once they feel they don't need us anymore, this campaign could get really right-wing and ugly, fast.

Update: To clarify, my thesis is that right-wing attacks in the nomination campaign have outnumbered left-wing attacks since Edwards dropped out, while left-wing attacks in the nomination campaign outnumbered right-wing attacks while Edwards was still around (he dropped out on January 30th). I also believe that there is a good chance this trend will only grow worse over time.