A few weeks back an interesting piece by Brian Beutler on Talking Points Memo argued that immigration reform seemed to be that one issue where everybody thinks it's a great idea as everyone thinks they will gain by doing it. Yet on the level of the parties at least, one side will gain, one side lose, in the long term. Ezra Klein, however, argued differently:
"In this case, however, Klein argues that it is in the interests of both parties to compromise:
"If these people had been on the voting rolls in 2012 and voted along the same lines as other Hispanic voters did last fall, President Barack Obama’s relatively narrow victory last fall would have been considerably wider, a POLITICO analysis showed."
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/04/immigration-reform-could-upend-electoral-college-90478.html#ixzz2RIjc1Mdc
"In this case, however, Klein argues that it is in the interests of both parties to compromise:
"Elections really are zero-sum affairs. For one party to win, the other has to lose. The incentives this creates are stunningly dysfunctional. Imagine a workplace where the only way to win a promotion was for the boss to fire your colleague. Even worse, if he likes your colleague’s work, you get a pay cut. Now imagine that your colleague needs your help to finish a big, difficult project. Think you’re going to help him?"
"This is why Washington is bitterly polarized place. The rules of politics are designed such that it’s not in the interest of the minority party to work with the majority party. There are moments when countervailing forces — be they public opinion or policy desires — can overcome the basic zero-sum nature of politics. But they’re increasingly rare."
"Immigration reform, however, sits at the center of an unusual convergence of forces that have made it positive-sum politics. Democrats believe in the policy, but they also believe that it’s good — even essential — politics to deliver on the number-one priority of the growing Hispanic electorate. Many Republicans also believe in the policy, and almost all Republicans believe that if their party is to prosper, they need to agree to immigration reform to show Hispanic voters that the GOP isn’t hostile to their interests."
"Moreover, the policy process is centered in the Senate and led, in part, by Sen. Marco Rubio, who is likely running for president in 2016. That means that the effect on the next election is scrambled: Much of the credit, unusually, will accrue to a Republican. As for the credit Obama will get, well, Obama’s a lame duck, so it’s less politically salient than it might otherwise be."
"The AFL-CIO/Chamber of Commerce deal is hardly the end of this process. It clears the way for the Gang of Eight to release a bill. It’s anyone’s guess whether that bill will clear the Senate, much less the House. But if it does, the reason will be simple: because both parties, for once, think they can win. Republicans and Democrats actually want a compromise, and so we might actually get one."
However, Brian Beutler of at Talking Points Memo, argues that someones math is off. Both parties are not going to benefit equally:
What we’re seeing here isn’t actually positive sum politics, but instead a situation in which both parties have examined the same issue and reached antithetical conclusions about its political consequences.
"Fortunately for proponents of CIR, these mutually incompatible calculations have led both parties to support the same policy. But nothing about the policy itself has altered the physics of two-party politics. Someone’s math is wrong."
"My hunch is that Republicans are wrong. That they think appealing to growing Democratic constituencies with policies the business community already supports will be an easier way to remain electorally viable than rethinking their broader economic agenda, and thus have a blinkered view of what CIR will mean for American politics in the future."
"But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Democrats are just being hubristic. It’s hard to say with certainty, because it’s a genuinely complicated calculation. Ezra alludes to this in his post, but gaming out the political consequences of immigration reform isn’t straightforward. The politics look different in the near term than in the long term. They’ll impact national politicians in different ways than they’ll impact candidates for state-wide or local offices."
"But over a long enough time horizon, there will be one winner. A majority of new citizens will either be Democrats or Republicans. To the extent that the new GOP position on immigration reform changes existing voters’ minds about politics, only one of two parties will be on the winning side of that realignment."
"Some important Republican strategists and opinion makers recognize this, and worry the GOP has picked a loser. And one of the things that’s helped CIR maintain its pulse on Capitol Hill is that these voices haven’t persuaded party leaders. At least not yet.
So we seem to have two theories of the cost/benefit analysis for the 2 parties. Klein in most cases agrees with Beutler on the "physics of the two party system" but thinks that immigration is that rare case in which the physics really is altered-what the philosophy would call a transcendent moment. In this rare case, at this rare moment, Klein thinks we may have "positive sum politics." Again, both of them believe that politics is almost always zero sum. However, Klein thinks the laws of physics can be transcended in some rare occasion like now. We of course could get into a deeper discussion of the laws of physics-what about the theory of the Black Swan Event? Isn't science actually replete with examples of unexplained moments where the laws of physics seem not to hold?
However, for now, we won't go there. Or will we? I will offer one last thought: if there are events where the laws of physics seem not to hold, this may be a moment of the laws of physics being traversed. Or it may just be that we can't give a scientific explanation of an event due to the limitations of our own knowledge of physics. So it could be a miracle. Or it could just be that through a limit of knowledge we've made an error.
Ok. Enough. I'm really finished on the physics for now. There's a piece in today's Politico which seems to strongly suggest that Beutler is right-this is no positive sum moment. The Politico piece argues that based on their 2012 voting patterns the Dems will have huge electoral benefits from a bill passing. The piece is called Immigration Reform Could Be a Bonanza For the Dems.
"The immigration proposal pending in Congress would transform the nation’s political landscape for a generation or more — pumping as many as 11 million new Hispanic voters into the electorate a decade from now in ways that, if current trends hold, would produce an electoral bonanza for Democrats and cripple Republican prospects in many states they now win easily."
"Beneath the philosophical debates about amnesty and border security, there are brass-tacks partisan calculations driving the thinking of lawmakers in both parties over comprehensive immigration reform, which in its current form offers a pathway to citizenship — and full voting rights — for a group of undocumented residents that roughly equals the population of Ohio, the nation’s seventh-largest state."
"If these people had been on the voting rolls in 2012 and voted along the same lines as other Hispanic voters did last fall, President Barack Obama’s relatively narrow victory last fall would have been considerably wider, a POLITICO analysis showed."
"Key swing states that Obama fought tooth and nail to win — like Florida, Colorado and Nevada — would have been comfortably in his column. And the president would have come very close to winning Arizona."
"Republican Mitt Romney, by contrast, would have lost the national popular vote by 7 percentage points, 53 percent to 46 percent, instead of the 4-point margin he lost by in 2012, and would have struggled even to stay competitive in GOP strongholds like Texas, which he won with 57 percent of the vote."
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/04/immigration-reform-could-upend-electoral-college-90478.html#ixzz2RIjc1Mdc
My first thought on reading this is thanks a lot Politico! How many more days or eve weeks is immigration reform going to take now to get passed?! LOL.
No doubt this is the rather simple argument of reform opponents. Rush Limbaugh, Pat Buchanan and Jeff Sessions argue this way. Why created all these new Democratic voters? Yet the case for doing nothing is not so simple as all that as the current status quo is already not working. And the number of Hispanic voters is growing regardless.
"Extrapolating 2012 voting trends to the 2028 presidential election — the first in which previously undocumented Hispanics could exercise their voting rights after a 13-year path to citizenship — is an inherently speculative exercise. But it is one that highlights the political sword hanging over Republicans as they consider immigration reform with a path to citizenship, an idea that is already deeply unpopular with many red-state constituencies."
"This is the hope of the GOP. If they could get into the range of 40% as Bush did whatever the exact numbers it will be worth it. Many argue-both liberals and conservatives with different motivations-that this still won't make Hispanics Republicans as Hispanics favor the Democrat's platform of a more generous social safety net, bigger government, etc.
"To support the measure virtually guarantees millions of new Democratic voters. But for Republicans to oppose immigration reform invites hostility among Hispanic-Americans who already are punishing the GOP and imperiling its electoral prospects."
"This reality, say many Republican strategists, gives the party no long-term alternative but to welcome the new voters and hope this allows the party to compete for Hispanic voters in ways that are closer to how President George W. Bush performed in 2004. National exit polls that year showed he won 44 percent of the Hispanic vote. Some analysts have questioned this data, but there is little doubt that Bush performed significantly better with this group than Romney, who got just 27 percent."
"If Republicans do nothing to repair their relationships with current and future Latino voters, “we certainly won’t be a national political party anymore,” said GOP strategist Steve Schmidt, a top adviser to John McCain in 2008."
"If one adds 11 million new Hispanic voters after immigration reform but applies 2004 percentages, the damage to Republicans is real but much less severe: Romney would have still won border states Texas and Arizona, albeit by smaller margins, while Obama would have held other Latino-heavy swing states like Nevada and Florida by slightly larger margins than the ones he did win by."
"This is the hope of the GOP. If they could get into the range of 40% as Bush did whatever the exact numbers it will be worth it. Many argue-both liberals and conservatives with different motivations-that this still won't make Hispanics Republicans as Hispanics favor the Democrat's platform of a more generous social safety net, bigger government, etc.
I think that's right. However, it could conceivably lessen the margin, It really wasn't until the 2007 defeat of immigration reform-led by the Republican party-that the real groundswell of Hispanics from the GOP started. It's not a bad hypothesis then that if they as a party offer decent support for it this will repair at least some of the post-2007 damage. Of course, because voting demographics are not a zero sum game, many voters who have supported the Republicans in recent elections over immigration as a single issue or most important issue-Ann Coulter now says she's a single issue voter over stopping higher levels of immigration- will support the GOP much less intensely in future cycles.
At the end of the day, though, immigration reform is the right thing to do and makes a lot of sense economically. The economic benefits are immense, and it's the right thing to do ethically and politically. Most Democrats see it as the right thing and a growing number of Republicans do as well. The most politically efficacious choice may also be the right choice in this case.
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