Amnesty's a Year Away, and Always Will Be

By Mark Krikorian on August 14, 2009

In between Quebecois meals bathed in gravy, or meat pies, or meat pies bathed in gravy, I missed something from a story this week on Obama's latest signal that amnesty's not happening any time soon:

But immigrant advocacy groups have been keeping up the pressure to hold Mr. Obama to his promise to Hispanic voters – that he'd make immigration reform a top priority during his first year in office.

"If we don't see a vote in Congress sooner than later, we will see a large Latino community not showing up at polls in midterm elections…. That is something the Democratic Party needs to measure," says Francisco Lopez, executive director of CAUSA, the largest Hispanic advocacy group in the Pacific Northwest.


In other words, at least some Hispanic pressure groups are playing a long game by outlining ahead of time the story line that the shellacking Democrats are likely to face — first this November in N.J. and Va. and then next November nationwide — is due to the party's insufficient attention to Hispanic demands. In fact, many of the Hispanic groups already believe they're responsible for Obama's election in the first place, despite the fact that he would have won even if not a single Hispanic had voted.

These prospective claims of the magical power of the Hispanic vote would be hilarious, given what we're seeing at the town halls and in the polling favoring McDonnell and Christie, except that many pols and analysts really believe in its magical power, regardless of facts. In any case, be warned of news headlines over the next year and a half blaming Democrat losses on insufficiently energetic pursuit of amnesty.