How many boneheaded things has Hillary already gone back on? Remember 5 thousand bond for every kid?

Count on it:  in the 2008 elections illegal mexican immigration will be more salient and more powerful for more voters than Iraq.

Could our side please get out front on this essentially _progressive_ issue that is 100% about economics, workers' rights, and social provision for working families? Get out front, that is, before we get blindsided yet _again_ by the Rovian slime machine?

OK Tep, you're truly on to something there is no question - but you're missing something too, the same thing the MSM misses: a large, motivated and growing voter block whose influence and numbers grow very day - latinos.  

If you think this issue is motivating the other side, check out how on fire latino voters of all classes, all parties are regarding this issue. Name one candidate who has won one election by banging the anti-immigration gong so far.  Know why there haven't been any?  Because latinos vote and this issue transcends everything with them too.  So far, it's a wash and I'd just like to see our party actually not be scardey cat reaction-based wussies about it out of fear - for once in their stupid lives.

Oh, Wandrey, it will be a glorious day when our party leadership manages to be something other than a scardy-cat reaction-based group of wussies.  When it happens, I will join you in dancing in the streets.

I agree that the illegal immigrant issue is going to be a defining one, though it is an issue that no longer exercises me like it used to.  (Working in the ER at Bellevue brought the issue home in a way that I no longer feel in Maine.)  I don't know exactly what the right answer is, but I agree totally with tep that we absolutely cannot afford to be caught flat-footed on this one.

Well, Wandrey, you can take the Latinos, and I'll take everybody else...

Seriously, immigration will indeed be THE issue of 2008 - Iraq will be 2nd or 3rd (especially if it continues to get better).  W is actually about right on this one, but I suspect the enforcement position will carry the day.. Enforcement First would be a handy slogan, no?

So far, the Dems are behind the curve because they refuse to stand up to La Raza and MALDEF, et al., and say that many things are possible once we get control of our borders.  Now I see where Felix Calderon is getting into the act, more bad news for Dems.  It could be that this will play out to the benefit of the Dems long-term, but Prop 187 passed and Pete Wilson was elected.

If you need a bad guy that doesn't demonize the poor souls fleeing here to feed their families, that's easy: start with Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland. Next, the sweatshop owners and the coyotes. Then try the Mexican elite. Finally, the ultimate culprit is Chinese manufacturing, the pushers of toxic toys and such.

Progressives should OWN this issue, not be terrified by it. Ride it all the way tot eh White House.

Could we be smart and tough, for once?

Oh, I'm not saying it isn't a valid issue. It is and it should be addressed in much more mature, rational ways than it has been so far - but  do not have high hopes for that part of it based on the level of discourse.  We have the nativists, the wimps, pissed latinos of all classes and everyone else.  This is not going to change between now and Nov 2009.  

And Butchie, thanks, I will take those latino votes, they've demonstrably been the winning factor in every one of the elections where immigrant bashers lost - which is all of them so far.  I don't even familiar with  the organizations are you mentioned - except La Raza which is old school and tired. These types of organizations certainly do not define this issue for Democrats, latinos or immigrants - it is to our benefit for Republicans to kick back and assume that.  

Like I said, this energizes the latino vote ACROSS ALL class and party affiliations, this is not a race-hustler only phenomena, not even close.  When everyone cleans up the discourse, this voting block may listen, but for now, it's all about feeling attacked, like it or not, and these folks - to their credit - VOTE.  I'm speaking only of tactics here sadly, I am in fact finally in more agreement with Tep than I used to be as he's refined his pitch.

Our relationship with Mexico is bth fertile ground and dangerous for Democrats, but if they are smart (and they are usually not), they will not panic.  Tep, you're getting warmer - I'm in.

truly sorry for my usual typos. oy -

The issue for 2008 won't be immigration but the coming recession. When peoples home values plummet, gas goes above $3.00 a gallon, the dollar sinks even further raising inflation, the stock market limps along, and interest rates rise I think immigration is going to go pretty far down that list. It will be the economy, security, and then the rest. Drdanny made a good point, many people just don't face the issues of immigration all that personally. California and the border states are not the whole country. And in a place like New Jersey, where fully 20% of the population is foreign born, people don't pay so much attention to who is legal and who isn't.

Blackie, I'll put good money on the bet that Repubs will succeed in making this issue as powerful as welfare and aff action and crime were in the 1980s. Immigration 1) reflects economic anxieties and 2) can easily be spun to generate passions at least as powerful as those involving gas prices or taxes. It will bury us if we don't get out front of it, and fast, and in a way that working-class white and afr-americans across the country can support.

Wandrey - you're right, the phrasing here is essential. Peter Brown of the Quinnipiac poll has an interesting analogy here, noting that when the REpubs succeeded in changing the issue from "aff action" (which most Americans supported) to "racial preferences" and "quotas", Americans turned against it, in droves.

www.realclearpolitics.com/.../immigration_is_new_affirmative.html

"The comparison between affirmative action/racial preferences and immigration shows similar challenges for presidential candidates, especially Democrats. In both cases, key portions of the Democratic base -- blacks on affirmative action and Hispanics on immigration -- feel strongly about the issue and contrary to the general public.

In addition, once the political discussion moves from the general concept to specific ways of implementing it, the politics get messy. With affirmative action/racial preferences, when the debate turned to specific programs that gave minorities an edge, the issue began to hurt those -- mostly Democrats -- who supported them.

"Quinnipiac University polls conducted during the past two weeks found 80-plus percent of voters, including large majorities of Democrats, in Ohio and Pennsylvania -- two of the most important general election swing states -- are opposed to providing licenses to illegal immigrants.

"In Ohio, 55 percent of voters said they were less likely to support a presidential candidate who advocated giving illegal immigrants driver's licenses, compared to 3 percent who said it made them more likely to support a candidate."