down in the West Texas town of El Paso

Some needed perspective on the violence at the border from the Texas Observer. It's a good article.

"the back of the line"

What does that mean? The Washington Independent, alone among its peers, bothers to deal with the absurdities of the immigration debate.

is Hillary in trouble? maybe...

So you've probably heard by now that Hillary had a hell of a time in the debate the other day. She got caught faking a position on an admittedly complex immigration issue, and Dodd, Edwards, and Obama ripped her a new one (and are continuing to today). And worst of all, it actually got media coverage; Brian Williams made time to show it, as did Katie Couric, as well as our local news.

On the other hand, I'm always talking about made-up scandals and traditional media values that predispose them to harping on certain (unimportant) issues while glossing over or not even noticing other (actually important) ones. Is this all smoke, just more b.s. from the same Beltway crowd that spent 8 long years deriding and wagging their fingers at her husband because, as David Broder famously put it, "he came over here and trashed the place, and it's not his place?" Will this matter a wit in the primary?

That depends entirely upon whether voters decide it matters. I know, that sounds like a cop-out, but we've seen rhetorical stumbles derail presidential campaigns before. Anyone remember "Actually I voted for it before I voted against it..."? I'm tempted to conclude that the reason that line succeeded so mightily and stood out from all the rest of the chatter so much is because it was something 1. out of Kerry's own mouth that 2. got widespread media coverage when people were listening and 3. perhaps most importantly, fed an already existent, if inchoate, narrative about John Kerry (in this case, the "flip-flopper").

Comparing the two, notice that Hillary's gaffe is similar, but not perfect. It was words that she said herself, and it feeds an emerging narrative about Hillary that she has no core values, but has incredible ambition, and thus will "say anything to get elected." She was confronted with a case where the more popular position was not apparent, and she couldn't find a position. I think that she's vulnerable to such a narrative (as are, frankly, all Democrats simply because they are Democrats), and there is still time to fall.

In fact, I think Hillary is more vulnerable to this narrative because of her electoral strategy. The reason that Hillary is favored among both liberals and centrists, among big business dems and pro-regulation dems, among anti-war voters and defense contractors, is because she's opted to become a cypher. People ridicule Obama for being too vague on policy, but the fact is that Hillary has made it a point to talk big about how the Iraq War should be stopped, or how we need a new health care system, or we need to stop climate change, and then she releases a plan that wows with detail but leaves all the big doors open.

Will Hillary stop the Iraq War? Hillary wants to keep a residual force there; how big would that "residual force" be? 1,000? 10,000? 100,000? She won't say, and that's the $64,000 question that decides whether she is pro-war or anti-war, isn't it? If 100,000 troops remain in Iraq past 2013, in what way has she "ended" the war?

And what about health care? She says she'll set up a government-run alternative health insurance for the poor, but how good will it be compared to private health insurance? That is the central question, because nationalized health care is capable of being far more efficient and negotiating lower prices, which would make it an attractive alternative even for those with private insurance. But if she's had it vetted by the insurance industry, which she says she has, how would they allow such a thing unless it was kept artificially shitty so that no one would actually opt for it unless they had no other choice?

Hillary talks a big talk, talks about change and reform and whatnot, but on every position she's left herself an out to avoid the reformist position if she so chooses, and that makes people able to see in her whatever they want to see. Anti-war democrats will tell you with a straight face that Clinton is the candidate to end the war, and no matter how many times you throw that residual force nonsense in their face, they continue to press the issue because they only see what they want to see. Meanwhile, several prominent hawks have said they support Hillary because she's the one least likely to end the war, and claim she's never said anything about ending the war. They see in her what they want to see because Hillary gives them both options.

That's why this moment in the debate is trouble: she tried to do the same thing here, to give people both options so that everyone thinks she took their own position, but she flubbed it and got caught. I think Edwards' attack was the most damaging ("I think I just heard Hillary give 2 different positions in 2 minutes") because it highlighted her actual strategy. That's exactly what she did.

Hillary's actually lucky that no other moments from the debate went viral, because not long at all before the immigrant driver's license snafu, she was asked to pledge that "Iran would not get nuclear weapons during her administration," and she resorted to dissembling so juvenile that the audience actually laughed at her answer:

It was a stupid move. She should've just pledged.

But I digress. "Will this actually damage her campaign?" is the issue. There's a big reason to believe it won't: the number 2 above--getting widespread media coverage when people are listening. Yeah, Brian and Timmy and Katie and John Stewart all covered it, but there's reason to believe that very few voters have really started paying attention to the race yet. How little attention, you may ask? Well, only 59% of Americans-- slightly over half-- can name even one single Republican running in the primary. And "most" are unable to even name any Democrats other than Hillary and/or Obama. Furthermore, it is still 2 months until the first primary, and 3 or 4 months until most of the country actually votes. Not to mention, the debate itself was on MSNBC, not exactly the most watched primetime spot.

If people did notice, however, I think this could get out of hand for Hillary pretty quickly. Suddenly li'l Timmy (not to mention actual voters!) would be focused on getting specifics out of her that slam the door on all those little outs, and as she's forced to take actual positions on everything, many will become less pleased with her, but any attempts to hedge, even the slightest bit, would further legitimize the narrative and undermine her credibility and perceived integrity.

Then, and only then, will we have ourselves a race.

GOP turns down Univision debate

From The Miami Herald:

Univisión planned to air the first presidential debates in Spanish on Sept. 9 and 16, one for Democrats, the other for Republicans, trumpeting a national coming-out party for Hispanic voters.

Except Republican candidates aren't coming. Only Ariz. Sen. John McCain agreed to participate in the event at the University of Miami.

So much for Sept. 16.

''That date is off the table,'' university spokeswoman Bárbara Gutiérrez said Wednesday.
...
All eight Democratic candidates are slated to show up Sept. 9, and party leaders plan to highlight the contrast. The New Democratic Network, a nationwide political group, is planning news conferences and inviting Hispanic leaders, including Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey, former Cabinet member Henry Cisneros and U.S. Rep. Luís Gutiérrez of Illinois.

Most of the Republican field also ignored invitations to attend Hispanic-oriented conferences in Florida organized by the National Association of Latin Elected Officials and the National Council of La Raza.

Foolish. There's one thing W had right, and that's that future GOP success depends on the Hispanic vote. If the GOP keeps blowing them off and, even worse, using them as scapegoats and objects of derision, they could fall out of power for a generation.

By the way, you may notice in the graph above that Univision was even going to give Republicans a debate on Dieciseis de Septiembre, Mexican Independence Day (the reporter appears to have missed the significance of the date). Appearing at a Spanish-language channel's debate on Mexican Independence Day would've been a hell of a gesture after all their nativist bullshit the last year or two.

Personally, I think the Democrats should angle to have their day switched.

"Illegal Immigrant Holding Facility"

A place families are rounded up against their will and herded into in large numbers and not allowed to leave, where a hated minority is sequestered off from the rest of the population while we contemplate their fate.

I can think of another term for it.

And it's not like it's never happened here before; it's just strange to consider that we're doing it now, in the 21st century. Of course, I guess it's not so strange to this person. Ya know, it is just uncanny that she wrote that in 2004, not even 2 years before the erection of the, er, "holding facility." Hmm, ironic, I guess. Hmm.

why a Democrat will be president in '09

This is what the GOP presidential candidates sound like on the 2nd most important issue to American voters. The most important issue, as you might guess, is Iraq, and "Yay surge!" isn't exactly the answer most Americans want to hear on that, either (66% want us to do something in Iraq, but "stay" isn't it, I'll put it that way).

The Republicans can talk about evil Messkins and scream "JACK BAUER!!!!" all they want, but the simple fact is that, at the end of the day, the American people have a particular set of issues they care about for which the Republican party has no answer. All they have left is scare tactics and tax cuts, and it looks like both are (finally!) losing their charm.

conceding defeat

Take a look at this video. Bush looks visibly jarred by the stunning defeat of his immigration bill. His tone and body language just scream "abject failure." I'm with Atrios on this one: if immigration only comes every 20 years or so, why push a shitty compromise that no one likes when we can wait until after '08 and get the bill we want?

Delicious.

are they trying to look as hypocritical as possible?

From TPM:

According to this quite hilarious article in the San Francisco Chronicle, the California GOP has hired as its chief operating officer, an Australian national who the Department of Homeland Security has been trying to deport for repeated immigration violations. As recently as Februrary, Michael Kamburowski, was working, rather haplessly, as a real estate agent in the Domincan Republic until he "ran away without mentioning anything to us," according to his one-time boss, Rico Pester, the owner of Re/Max Island Realty, in the resort town of Punta Cana. (Said his Re/Max bio: "With his attention to detail, laid-back yet professional approach, and sense of humor, Michael will smoothen the road to your dream property in Punta Cana.")

Perhaps it is somehow implicitly redundant to note that in the second half of the 1990s Kamburowski was working for Grover Norquist on immigration policy, tort reform and 'paycheck protection' before becoming the executive director of Norquist's Reagan Legacy Project.

I've run out of snappy anti-GOP jabs. I got nuthin'.

Ron Paul is not who you think he is

If I were Rudy Giuliani or John McCain (known in the jungle as the Pandersaurus) or Mitt Romney (whose followers are affectionately known as "mittheads"), right after the primary ends I'd take as hard of a left turn as I could on one or two issues. If they do so, they'll probably win in a landslide because progressives and liberals apparently have an acute, though latent, case of the Stupid that triggers upon hearing a conservative take a liberal stance on one issue that they care about. We saw this with way too many liberals in Texas with Kinky Friedman, and he didn't even need a liberal stance on any issues; he just needed a bunch of snappy one liners.

Now we're seeing it with far-right nutjob Ron Paul. David Neiwert dismantles him ably at Orcinus; I'd suggest checking it out, just to get a sense of how cuckoo Paul really is. For background, phenry @ dKos wrote a good series on him. Paul is what you might call "the far, far right's ambassador to reality." And I don't mean "far right" like Jerry Falwell or Grover Norquist. I mean far right like "heavily armed white guys staring out the windows waiting for the Mexican horde or the black helicopters" far right. Or the "the Jews caused 9/11 and are secretly seeking world domination by hijacking the UN" far right. Here's a taste:

Paul, a tireless foe of the United Nations for more than 30 years, is one of the higher-profile proponents of the familiar "New World Order" conspiracy theory, a paranoid fantasy in which a shadowy group of powerful players is perpetually plotting to conquer the world. Like many on the fringe, Paul takes his fear of other countries to ridiculous extremes; when asked by radio host Alex Jones in November 2005 about a report that Dutch and Mexican troops were helping out with Hurricane Katrina relief operations, Paul called it "a horrible precedent, and it's all part of the NAFTA scheme and globalization and world government."

Again, he's the ambassador, so a lot of what he says, looked at individually, can be rationalized away or may even sound reasonable, until you see who he's really speaking to and what he really means. Liberals, for instance, are also against aspects of globalization and NAFTA, but not for the same reasons Paul is against them, and the end result of President Paul abolishing NAFTA wouldn't be anything resembling what liberals would want or expect.

Check out the phenry posts and the Orcinus posts to see what I mean.

Here, by the way, are some choice nuggets ripped straight off his campaign website:

NAFTA”s superhighway is just one part of a plan to erase the borders between the U.S. and Mexico, called the North American Union. This spawn of powerful special interests, would create a single nation out of Canada, the U.S. and Mexico, with a new unelected bureaucracy and money system.

And there's this, one of his points to solving the immigration issue:

End birthright citizenship. As long as illegal immigrants know their children born here will be citizens, the incentive to enter the U.S. illegally will remain strong.

The incredible hypocrisy and the apostasy against a core American belief should be self-evident.

"especially immigration and illegal drugs"

For those of you who've been living under a rock (or perhaps abroad?), in January a dozen or so US Attorneys were quietly fired under questionable circumstances. One had issued indictments for several Republicans, including the guy who was, by all accounts, the big cahuna in the Duke Cunningham scandal, only a couple of weeks beforehand. The attorneys will be testifying to Congress this week about the (questionable) circumstances of their firing.

One case that has become the exemplum for the entire scandal is that of the US Attorney for the state of New Mexico. It appears that, at some point during the week before the November midterms, he was contacted by two lawmakers trying to get him to speed up an indictment of a state Democrat on corruption charges. It now appears that those two lawmakers were Rep. Heather Wilson (who, you may remember, just barely survived her re-election by 875 votes out of nearly 211,000), and Senator Pete Domenici. As if it even needs to be mentioned anymore, they're both Republicans.

This weekend, both the White House and Sen. Domenici have gone into full damage control mode, as this scandal could get pretty big. And here's where I'd like to put in my 2 cents that, so far, no one else seems to have noticed. The White House/Domenici tactic from here is to paint the attorney as someone who's performance necessitated his ouster, rather than his partisanship. It also has nothing to do with filling posts with cronies or deepening the rather drained and wanting GOP bench.

We've talked a lot about "dog whistle politics" and GOP racist code in this wee corner of the blogosphere, and I feel like I'm starting to get a feel for it, and am learning where to look for it and when to expect it. Domenici, suddenly mired in bad press and staring down the barrel of his own re-election in '08, needs someone, to give him a break and come to his aid: GOP voters, those who really understand him and what New Mexico's problems are and why this attorney needed to go.

Everyone feel primed and ready?

From Sen. Domenici's statement:

During the course of the last six years, that already heavy caseload in our state has been swamped by unresolved new federal cases, especially in the areas of immigration and illegal drugs. I have asked, and my staff has asked, on many occasions whether the federal prosecutors and federal judiciary within our state had enough resources. I have been repeatedly told that we needed more resources. As a result I have introduced a variety of legislative measures, including new courthouse construction monies, to help alleviate the situation.

My conversations with [the US Attorney] over the years have been almost exclusively about this resource problem and complaints by constituents. He consistently told me that he needed more help, as have many other New Mexicans within the legal community.

My frustration with the U.S. Attorney’s office mounted as we tried to get more resources for it, but public accounts indicated an inability within the office to move more quickly on cases.[emphasis mine]

Why was the highlighted snippet so important to add? What bearing does it have on his larger point? Ahh, more important to the question (remember your audience) is, what kind of US Attorney would be neglectful of immigration and drugs cases in New Mexico and would be constantly asking for more government aid and more American dollars to do a job that, one would assume, other US Attorneys have done without extra it?

Meet United States Attorney David Iglesias.