President Barack Obama's major priorities dropped from the agenda of an election-year Congress facing voter disillusionment

WASHINGTON Immigration reform has become the first of President Barack Obama’s major priorities dropped from the agenda of an election-year Congress facing voter disillusionment. Sounding the death knell was Obama himself.The president noted that lawmakers may lack the “appetite” to take on immigration while many of them are up for re-election and while another big legislative issue – climate change – is already on their plate.

“I don’t want us to do something just for the sake of politics that doesn’t solve the problem,” Obama told reporters Wednesday night aboard Air Force One.Immigration reform was an issue Obama promised Latino groups that he would take up in his first year in office. But several hard realities – a tanked economy, a crowded agenda, election-year politics and lack of political will – led to so much foot-dragging in Congress that, ultimately, Obama decided to set the issue aside.

With that move, the president calculated that an immigration bill would not prove as costly to his party two years from now, when he seeks re-election, than it would today, even though some immigration reformers warned that a delay could so discourage Democratic-leaning Latino voters that they would stay home from the polls in November.Some Democrats thought pushing a bill through now might help their party. If it failed, they could blame Republican resistance, though in reality many Democrats didn’t want to deal with an immigration bill this year either.

Perhaps seeing the handwriting on the wall, top Senate Democrats released a legislative framework for immigration reforms anyway. The draft proposal, obtained by The Associated Press on Tuesday, called for, among other things, meeting border security benchmarks before anyone in the country illegally can become a legal permanent U.S. resident.By Wednesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi offered little hope that the issue was still alive on Capitol Hill.”If there is going to be any movement in this regard, it will require presidential leadership, as well as an appetite, is that the word? … as well as a willingness to move forward in the Congress,” she said.House Republican leader John Boehner was more blunt. “There is not a chance that immigration is going to move through the Congress,” he said Tuesday.

Rep. Luis Gutierrez, the Democrats’ leading advocate for immigration reform, has said he voted for health care reform on the understanding that Obama and congressional Democrats would move a major immigration bill.Even though he would like to see Latinos turn out to vote for Democrats in 2010, Gutierrez said “many will probably decide to stay home.” However, he added, a strict, new immigration law in Arizona may change that dynamic. The law requires law enforcement officers to question anyone they suspect is in the country illegally.”On one hand you are not going to vote because you don’t believe people you voted for are doing a good enough job,” Gutierrez said. “Then you say, ‘I got to vote, because the enemy is so mean and vindictive, I got to get out there.'”The Hispanic vote is growing, largely because of Latinos’ increasing population. The 9.7 million Latinos who cast ballots in 2008 made up about 7.4 percent of the electorate, according to a 2009 Pew Research Center study.

Hispanic voters helped flip the battleground states of Colorado, Florida, Nevada and New Mexico from Republican to Democratic in the 2008 presidential election.But even though Latinos’ numbers have been increasing, in some parts of the country their portions of voting populations are not large enough to affect election outcomes.

Democrats hold a 254-177 majority in the House, with four vacancies. But 48 are in districts where Republican Arizona Sen. John McCain did better than Obama in the 2008 elections.Matt Angle, a Democratic political strategist focused on Texas, said it would be worse for Democrats to propose a bill that has no hope of passing or getting Republican support. Doing so would allow Republicans to cherry-pick parts of the bill to use against Democratic candidates, he said.

The Senate also has a number of competitive races, some in states with significant numbers of Hispanic voters, such as in Nevada, the home state of Majority Leader Harry Reid. Latinos are about 12-15 percent of likely voters there.”For Democrats it is critical they can deliver if they want to continue nurturing the support they want from this community,” said Clarissa Martinez De Castro, National Council of La Raza immigration and national campaigns director.(AP)

GOP ends Dems' longtime advantage on economy amid anxiety over jobs, recession

WASHINGTON  Notch one more victim of the recession: With crucial midterm elections nearing, Democrats have lost the advantage they’ve held for years as the party the public trusts to steer the economy.The timing could be fortunate for the Republicans. With jobs and the economy dominating voters’ concerns, the GOP will wield the issue as a cudgel in the battle to grab control of at least one chamber of Congress this November and weaken President Barack Obama.”The number one question on voters’ minds is, ‘Where are the jobs?'” said Ken Spain, spokesman for the House Republican campaign organization. “Republican candidates on the campaign trail will ask one very simple question: ‘Are you better off today that you were two years ago?'”

Misty McMahon, 30, a teacher from Vancleave, Miss., knows her answer. “I feel like it’s so bad right now that it will be hard to climb out,” said McMahon, who voted for Obama but now trusts Republicans more on the economy. “I’m kind of disappointed in the stuff he’s done.”

Each party now has the confidence of 44 percent of people for handling the economy, according to an Associated Press-GfK Poll conducted this month. The Democrats had a nine-point advantage just four months ago, and have held an edge since AP polls began asking about the issue in 2006. In longer-running polling by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, the last time the two parties were even on the economy was 2002.

Pollsters, analysts and politicians across party lines agree the Democrats have lost their grip on the issue chiefly due to unemployment rates that have stuck near 10 percent since last summer, an ongoing foreclosure crisis and the recession that began in December 2007. Despite signals the economy has begun to heal – such as last week’s reports of growing new home sales and rising orders for manufactured products – the improvements have been too subtle for many people to notice.While the November elections are a long way off, most economists believe unemployment will still be high by Election Day, and improvements in the economy are likely to be modest.

Aware that the party in power is commonly punished for a weak economy, Democrats hope to persuade voters to view the elections as a choice between their party’s recovery efforts and what they call the GOP’s preferences to reward corporations and wealthy taxpayers.

“It will be the job of members of Congress and the president and our candidates to make it clear that these elections are not just a referendum on the state of the economy; it will be a choice between two different paths,” said Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., who heads the House Democratic campaign operation.The Democrats also may have hurt their image as effective custodians of the economy by spending more than a year pushing Obama’s near $1 trillion health care overhaul through Congress. It was enacted last month to mixed public reviews and after many people – including Democrats – complained that stronger congressional efforts on jobs were overdue.

“It created the impression that Democrats were not focusing enough on jobs and getting people back to work,” said Geoffrey Garin, a Democratic pollster and strategist, adding, “But health care is now behind us.”Some of Obama’s top economic initiatives have also failed to deliver political dividends because, economists say, they have largely prevented the recession from worsening rather than sparking immediate improvements.

As a result, many people have come to view those measures as symbols of excessive federal spending. They include the $787 billion stimulus package and the $80 billion rescue of automakers General Motors and Chrysler, to which the public often adds the $700 billion financial industry bailout enacted in late 2008 under President George W. Bush.

“Politically, it’s often hard to show a negative, a what-if-we-hadn’t-stepped-in,” said Mark Penn, a Democratic pollster and strategist.

Details from the AP-GfK poll show perils and opportunities for both parties.Three-quarters of those surveyed said the economy is still in poor condition. Of that group, fewer than four in 10 said they trust Democrats to do a better job on the economy, and about the same number said they want Democrats to win control of Congress in November.In contrast, among the people who say the economy is doing well, two-thirds trust Democrats to handle the issue and nearly as many want them to control Congress.Supporters of a party in power tend to view the economy more positively than members of the party out of power.

Two other groups in the poll could be pivotal in November.Among people who say the economy is bad, those who believe things improved in the past month are far likelier to support Democrats than those who’ve not seen recent gains. Growth in optimism could help Democrats retain their congressional majorities.

On the other hand, nearly two-thirds in the poll say they know a non-relative who has recently lost a job. This group, whose size has remained steady for more than a year, is likelier to back Republicans.

“That’s the circle that becomes problematic for any incumbent administration,” said GOP pollster David Winston.The AP-GfK Poll was conducted April 7-12 by GfK Roper Public Affairs and Media and involved interviews with 1,001 adults nationwide on landline and cellular telephones. It had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4.3 percentage points.(AP)

internet survey user grows fast among Latinos

internet survey

NEW YORK  Latino adults are increasing their use of the Internet faster than other ethnic groups, according to a new survey from the Pew Hispanic Center and the Pew Internet and American Life Project.Between 2006 and 2008, the percentage of adult Latinos in the U.S. who used the Internet grew to 64 percent from 54 percent, according to the survey. Among whites, Internet use increased to 76 percent from 72 percent. Blacks saw the smallest overall gain – two percentage points to 63 percent.Latinos who were born in the U.S. were much more likely to go online than those born outside the U.S. This gap persisted even after accounting for differences in education levels, household income and English proficiency, the report said.

Poor Latinos went online less than those with higher incomes. But overall, groups that traditionally have had low rates of Internet use were increasingly embracing the Web. In 2006, for example, 31 percent of Latinos without a high school diploma reported ever going online. In 2008, this number grew to 41 percent.

Pew also surveyed people on broadband access. In many surveys over the past seven years, it has found that those with home broadband access are more engaged in the online world, staying in touch with friends and family and finding out what is going on in their communities.

More than three-quarters of Latinos who used the Internet from their homes did so using a broadband connection. This was up from 63 percent in 2006. For whites, this percentage grew to 82 percent from 65 percent and for blacks, home broadband access grew to 78 percent from 63 percent.The report, which Pew was releasing Tuesday, focused on technology use among Latinos, whites and African Americans between 2006 and 2008. It consisted of eight telephone surveys, three conducted for the Pew Hispanic Center, and five for the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

The five Pew Internet surveys had sample sizes ranging from 2,251 to 4,001 adults and had margins of error between 1.7 percentage points and 2.4 percentage points.The three Pew Hispanic Center surveys each sampled between 1,540 and 4,016 U.S. Latinos and had margins of error ranging from 2.4 percentage points to 3.8 percentage points.