Obama backs letting illegal immigrants get driver’s licenses (H/T).
Sen. Barack Obama easily won the African American vote in South Carolina, but to woo California Latinos, where he is running 3-to-1 behind rival Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, he is taking a giant risk: spotlighting his support for the red-hot issue of granting driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants.
It’s a huge issue for Latinos, who want them. It’s also a huge issue for the general electorate, which most vehemently does not. Obama’s stand could come back to haunt him not only in a general election, but with other voters in California, where driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants helped undo former Gov. Gray Davis.
Clinton stumbled into that minefield in a debate last fall and quickly backed off. First she suggested a New York proposal for driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants might be reasonable. Then she denied endorsing the idea, and later came out against them.
Asked directly about the issue now, her California campaign spokesman said Clinton “believes the solution is to pass comprehensive immigration reform.”
“Barack Obama has not backed down” on driver’s licenses for undocumented people, said Federico Peña, a former Clinton administration Cabinet member and Denver mayor now supporting Obama. “I think when the Latino community hears Barack’s position on such an important and controversial issue, they’ll understand that his heart and his intellect is with Latino community.”
Obama’s intention is to draw distinctions between himself and Clinton on what are otherwise indistinguishable positions on immigration. Both have adopted the standard Democratic approach of favoring tougher enforcement along with earned legalization.
The Illinois senator is differentiating himself in three key areas: driver’s licenses, a promise to take up immigration reform his first year in office, and his background as the son of an immigrant (his father was Kenyan) and a community organizer in Chicago.
The problem with Obama is not so much a lack of substance; it’s that much of what substance he has is bad, so he tries to cover with gauzy generalities (”There’s not a red America or a blue America, there’s an America”). Didn’t Gray Davis get clobbered for making the same political move? And if it didn’t fly in mostly liberal California, how will it fly in the rest of the nation?
I see two options: (1) Obama is too naive to be president, or (2) he’s cynically pandering to win an election, which defeats the rationale of his candidacy, that he’s transcending divisions.
Hubbard posted this at 11:51 AM HKT on Tuesday, January 29th, 2008 as Audacity of Hype, The Melting Pot Boils Over
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The American Scene is quickly becoming my favorite blog, for though I don’t always agree with its take on conservatism it is always thoughtful and thought-provoking.
Here James Poulos endorses Romney and Obama. I’m still thinking this over:
I’ve laid out my thoughts on the appeal of Obama elsewhere. He could be a disaster, to the GOP and the country, but he could be not that bad or ineffective. I am certain that Clinton could tear apart the Republican party more effectively than Obama, whose dovish position on Iraq and old-school liberal support won’t cause conservatives and libertarians of all stripes to vengefully turn against one another after the general election to purge the party of Those Responsible. A Clinton victory would do exactly that.
Obama’s therapeutic politics are worrisome. Politics should never be the forum in which we seek to transcend politics — a lesson John McCain would do well to remember. But there’s nothing wrong with using politics as a forum in which we transcend race — in fact, this is exactly the sort of thing politics is for. Citizenship is a state of equality, but even more importantly, a state of equal respect. Conservatives have hated the way liberals have spread an enforced doctrine of equal cultural respect over the past twenty years, integrating it into the academy, the business world, and schools. I have no quarrel with the proposition that respect is earned and neither all lifestyles nor all people are inherently worthy of any particular kind of respect other than that demanded by the law and basic civility (no spitting). I too am deathly tired of the idea that any old idiot or any identity faction must not only be tolerated but affirmed, embraced, accepted, and celebrated. But the best way to counter these pressures is not to degenerate into anarchistic individualism or a country-club siege mentality. We can run, not hide, to take one obvious example, from urban decay. The best way to standardize respect in this country is to standardize citizenship, and return to citizens the ability to administer their shared affairs together face to face.
For all his liberalism, Obama is unique in his ability to inspire the desire for that kind of respect and real political participation. Astonishingly, he can get rooms full of liberals to chant “USA! USA!” and “Race doesn’t matter!” There is a profound desire in the culture today to escape from politics and citizenship — to enjoy the feeling of togetherness rather than do the hard work that makes togetherness worthwhile. Obama’s style and substance tempts and rewards this desire. But it also tempts and rewards its opposite. Hillary Clinton is death to true politics. No village will ever be able to administer its own affairs again if she has her way. Obama inspires people to not abandon politics to the experts, to recognize the goods of taking control of their own lives to common purpose. I may disagree with him on nearly all the issues, but I earnestly hope that the chance he presents, especially on the left, is seized before all the life of true citizen politics is drained away.
conor friedersdorf posted this at 11:39 AM HKT on Tuesday, January 29th, 2008 as Uncategorized
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I’ve noticed that I now have an extremely accurate ability to predict — within a few sentences — whether a disaffected Republican is a Ron Paul supporter or not. It’s kind of funny.
Tom posted this at 10:32 AM HKT on Tuesday, January 29th, 2008 as Audacity of Hype
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Says Apollo: Barack Obama is “the most issue-free candidate I’ve ever seen.”
I suppose if I pointed out that his Web site is brimming with issues, or that he’s delivered major policy addresses on as many important issues as any other candidate, Apollo would retort that he never talks about issues, only “hope” and “change” and “sunshine.”
And I’d then ask how one explains Obama’s response to the State of the Union address.
I’ve noted before that it’s perfectly legitimate to disagree with the substance of Barack Obama’s policy prescriptions. I certainly do more often than not.
But it’s factually inaccurate to say that Obama is an “issue-free” candidate, whether you are talking about rhetoric or reality.
conor friedersdorf posted this at 1:29 AM HKT on Tuesday, January 29th, 2008 as Uncategorized
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John McCain, setting the record straight about Sam Alito:
“Let me just look you in the eye,” McCain told me. “I’ve said a thousand times on this campaign trail, I’ve said as often as I can, that I want to find clones of Alito and Roberts. I worked as hard as anybody to get them confirmed. I look you in the eye and tell you I’ve said a thousand times that I wanted Alito and Roberts. I have told anybody who will listen. I flat-out tell you I will have people as close to Roberts and Alito [as possible], and I am proud of my record of working to get them confirmed, and people who worked to get them confirmed will tell you how hard I worked.”
“I don’t get it,” McCain continued. “I have a clear record of that. All I can tell you is my record is clear: I’ve supported these guys. I went to the floor of the Senate and spoke in favor of them. It’s in the record, saying, ‘You’ve got to confirm these people.’”
John McCain has serious work to do to win votes from conservatives: campaign finance, pharma-bashing, global warming hysteria, etc. But can we please end this idiotic meme that McCain is weak on judges?
Tom posted this at 5:44 PM HKT on Monday, January 28th, 2008 as Audacity of Hype, I, For One, Welcome Our Judicial Overlords!
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I’m going to go home and hide under my bed with my favorite teddy bear. Maybe he can protect me:
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Illinois Democrats close to Sen. Barack Obama are quietly passing the word that John Edwards would be named attorney general in an Obama administration.
Tom posted this at 4:29 PM HKT on Monday, January 28th, 2008 as Audacity of Hype
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If Barack Obama were going around regularly injecting race into the 2008 presidential election, exploiting identity politics and willfully exacerbating and exploiting racial divisions, conservatives (and Apollo particularly) would be excoriating him for it.
Meanwhile the Clintons and their campaign are going around regularly injecting race into the campaign, exploiting identity politics and willfully exacerbating and exploiting racial tensions… and conservatives don’t have much to say about it.
Another thought: if anytime during the last decade a Democrat would have come along and told people that the Clinton’s brand of dishonest, divisive politics was damaging to the country and must be ended, that Bill Clinton relies on factually dishonest statements when campaigning and that it’s important to work with rather than demonize Republican leaders, even if you disagree with them on substance, Republicans would’ve cheered.
So how is it that any conservative Republican prefers Hillary to Barack?
conor friedersdorf posted this at 4:08 PM HKT on Monday, January 28th, 2008 as Uncategorized
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This year, Super Tuesday falls on February 5th, as does Mardi Gras. If things go well for the nation’s sanity, the nominations will be effectively settled on the 5th, and we’ll be able to give up politics for Lent. The headlines on Wednesday will practically write themselves “[Insert losers' names here] Campaigns in Ashes!”
Please, God, please let the nomination madness end then. . .
Hubbard posted this at 1:21 PM HKT on Monday, January 28th, 2008 as Audacity of Hype, I have seen the future. . .
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Obama, on getting Ted Kennedy’s endorsement:
Any of the Democratic candidates would love to have Ted Kennedy’s support. And we have certainly actively sought it.
Some might observe that if “uniting” the country were what Obama wanted to do, he could perhaps start by not actively soliciting the endorsement of Ted Kennedy. Of course, wooing the endorsement of the man who gave the shameful and slanderous “Robert Bork’s America” speech and set off the current environment of judicial polarization would fit right in line with the theory that Obama is trying to get elected on the most non-substantive campaign imaginable, but is a far leftist in his both his sentiments and policies.
Apollo posted this at 12:56 PM HKT on Monday, January 28th, 2008 as Audacity of Hype
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Hubbard posted this at 10:24 AM HKT on Monday, January 28th, 2008 as Audacity of Hype
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I don’t normally like memes, but this one from the Anchoress seems more interesting than most:
1. Pick up the nearest book ( of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people.
Today’s your lucky day, because the nearest book to my computer was Herodotus! Picking up on page 123 of my edition (Book II, Chapters 10-11, if you’re following along in your own):
I could mention other rivers also, far inferior to the Nile in magnitude, that have effected very great changes. Among these not the least is the Achelous, which, after passing through Acarnania, empties itself into the sea opposite the islands called Echinades, and has already joined one-half of them to the continent.
In Arabia, not far from Egypt, there is a long and narrow gulf running inland from the sea called the Erythraean, of which I will here set down the dimensions.
Ooooh. Sorry, but if you want to know those dimensions, you’ll just have to read about them on your own.
Apollo posted this at 1:08 AM HKT on Monday, January 28th, 2008 as Nerdom, Random Bloggish Things
3 Comments »
One of my favorite things about Barack Obama’s candidacy is the fact that during his rallies and victory speeches those present have a habit of breaking into spontaneous chants of U-S-A, U-S-A, which isn’t something that happens in Hillary Clintons or John Edwards campaign, and that I’ve never heard chanted at a big political gathering of Democrats.
conor friedersdorf posted this at 11:08 PM HKT on Sunday, January 27th, 2008 as Uncategorized
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From the end of a delightful story about the upstanding citizens of Brattleboro, Vermont (for the unedified) voting about arresting the president and/or vice president for, um, various crimes:
The [ballot] article goes on to say the indictments would be the “law of the town of Brattleboro that the Brattleboro police … arrest and detain George Bush and Richard Cheney in Brattleboro, if they are not duly impeached …”
Daims said people in Brattleboro were willing to “think outside the box” and consider the issue.
Daims had no compunction in comparing Bush and Cheney with one of the most notorious people in history.
“If Hitler were still alive and walked through Brattleboro, I think the local police would arrest him for war crimes,” Daims said.
[Insert text here.]
Apollo posted this at 10:19 PM HKT on Sunday, January 27th, 2008 as Dirty Hippies
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Three questions come to mind from the news that Caroline Kennedy endorsed Obama.
1. What on earth could Obama have in common with the president who got us into Vietnam and thought that battling global Communism was the most pressing issue of his time?
2. What has Caroline Kennedy ever done to justify her endorsement getting a New York Times editorial or, generally, making news?
3. Has Margaret Truman made an endorsement yet?
Apollo posted this at 8:19 PM HKT on Sunday, January 27th, 2008 as Audacity of Hype, Journalism
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I wonder if he’ll perform a little better at this press conference than he did at this one.
Apollo posted this at 1:26 PM HKT on Sunday, January 27th, 2008 as An Insult to Drunken Sailors, Audacity of Hype
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