new immigration law has prompted calls from civil rights groups for a boycott of the state’s industries and sports teams

Arizona’s draconian new immigration law has prompted calls from civil rights groups for a boycott of the state’s industries and sports teams . But don’t get too excited. It turns out that the new law is quite popular – and not just in Arizona. Two recent national polls – one by Gallup , the other by CBS – have found that a majority of Americans strongly approve of the state’s immigration crackdown.

In fact, some even some think it doesn’t go far enough. Have Americans become rightwing nuts? Hardly. But Washington’s endless dithering on immigration policy has the whole country at a boiling point. And if Arizonans want to vent their anger, well, bully for them, say voters – including a majority of independents, and even a solid third of Democrats . With the midterm elections just six months away, and Democratic fortunes fading fast, immigration is fast becoming an albatross for Obama.

Egged on by his disaffected Latino base, Obama decided to denounce the Arizona law. But voters obviously don’t agree with him. And Obama has also decided to urge Congress to begin work on comprehensive immigration reform, even though his key GOP ally, Senator Lindsey Graham, a moderate, isn’t playing ball. Graham warned Obama months ago that if he rammed healthcare reform through Congress, he could kiss immigration reform goodbye. Apparently, the president wasn’t listening. And neither was Senate majority leader Harry Reid, who is trailing both of his GOP opponents in the polls, and could well lose his seat this November.

Reid tried to rally Latino voters in Nevada last month by promising that Democrats would try to pass immigration reform this year, even if the GOP won’t help. Apparently, though, Reid forgot to consult with other Democrats. Because it turns out, post-Arizona, that there aren’t enough Democratic votes to pass immigration reform. In fact, Reid may not even be able to get the 50 votes necessary to bring a Democrat-only bill to the Senate floor – let alone secure its passage. What’s Obama to do? Right now, he’s caught between his angry and mobilised Latino base, which is demanding that he push forward with a plan to legalise undocumented immigrants, and mainstream voters, who seem to be leaning toward the GOP’s view that border and workplace enforcement should come first. It’s a recipe for disaster. Many Democrats – and not just Reid – need Latinos and other base groups to turn out in large numbers if they hope to prevail against Republicans this November – and preserve their party’s control of Congress. According to political experts, in some 35 congressional election contests in the West, a high Latino voter turn out could well provide the margin of difference. Also up for grabs, depending on Latino voting, are critical races in high-density Latino states like Florida.

There, a rising GOP star, Marco Rubio, who is Latino, is seeking to win a three-way Senate race in which former GOP Gov. Charlie Crist is running as an independent. On the other hand, there are just as many competitive districts in the South and Midwest where key swing voters overwhelmingly support the new Arizona crackdown, according to polls. Any move by Obama and the Democrats in the direction of legalization – even stepped criticism of Arizona’s new law, perhaps – could well doom Democratic fortunes there. For the GOP, meanwhile, it’s a question of how to balance the short-term political gain of holding out on immigration reform with the potential long-term damage to the party of appearing hostile to Latino aspirations. Everyone knows, Latinos especially, that the Arizona GOP was responsible for the Arizona law. And since many Republicans at the national level have refused to criticize the law, they are not winning any new friends among a key swing constituency they lost in 2008. But most Republicans are calculating that Latinos are just as concerned as mainstream voters about the deficit and the state of the economy – and won’t penalise the GOP for not focusing on immigration before November. And, in fact, like many Democrats, the GOP is also finding itself boxed in by its nativist wing. Just ask Senator John McCain, who has enthusiastically backed the state’s new immigration crackdown because of nativist pressure from GOP challenger, and Tea Party favorite, JD Hayworth. If he hadn’t, he wouldn’t stand a chance of getting re-elected, observers say. With only a narrow legislative window remaining – Congress takes a break on May 28, and when it returns, candidates start ginning up their election campaigns – serious action on immigration is unlikely. Reid, already under fire from the GOP for his grand-standing on immigration, has promised to focus on an energy, bill first and foremost.

Obama, meanwhile, recently took advantage of the annual White House “Cinco de Mayo” celebration to say that he still hoped that Congress would “start work” on immigration this year. In the game of verbal inches that often passes for Washington politics, that statement was taken as a positive sign. Of what, though, no one’s exactly sure.

Az immigration law, New push for reform

WASHINGTON – As hopes for Republican support fade, Senate Democratic leaders on Thursday unveiled a push for comprehensive immigration reform aimed in part at stopping Arizona’s tough immigration-enforcement law from spreading to other states.”Democrats and Republicans agree on one thing: The immigration system is broken and needs to be fixed,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said at a Capitol Hill news conference. “We are offering this framework as an invitation to our Republican colleagues: Work with us to solve this problem that has plagued us for far too long.”But that invitation was met with skepticism by some key Republicans, including Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who this week abandoned efforts to work with Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., on a bipartisan bill. He was the only Republican working on the bill.

When it was clear that Graham was out, Democrats moved ahead with their own proposal, in part to respond to calls for action by Hispanic rights groups. Hispanic voters, who helped propel Barack Obama into the White House in 2008 after he pledged to make immigration reform a priority, make up an important part of Democrats’ political base.

But it is unclear whether the president will throw his weight behind the latest proposal, which would require that border security be significantly tightened before the government could offer a path to citizenship to the estimated 11 million immigrants in the country illegally.On Wednesday, Obama said Congress may lack the “appetite” to take on immigration during an election year in which Democrats are expected to lose seats in the House and Senate. But in a statement Thursday, Obama praised the proposal.

“The next critical step is to iron out the details of a bill,” he said. “We welcome that discussion, and my administration will play an active role in engaging partners on both sides of the aisle to work toward a bipartisan solution that is based on the fundamental concept of accountability that the American people expect and deserve.”

Rodolfo Espino, an assistant professor of political science at Arizona State University, said the mixed messages could simply be the result of Obama not wanting to raise expectations too high.Espino warned that Congress’ window of opportunity to act on the hot-button topic is shrinking fast.”If you push this too close to primary- and general-election dates, I just don’t see something very good coming out with respect to a wise immigration-reform policy,” he said. “As you start pushing closer and closer to that Tuesday in November, you’re going to have some Democrats, particularly some of your moderate, vulnerable Democrats, who are going to start waffling a bit more.”

In a joint statement, Graham and Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., said the immigration proposal is political gamesmanship. “It poisons the well for those of us who are working toward a more secure border and responsible, bipartisan reform of our immigration laws,” the statement said.

But Schumer said he is serious about reform and is continuing to talk with moderate Republican senators about signing onto the proposal, which would, among other things, bar states and municipalities from enacting their own Arizona-style rules and penalties related to immigration because those rules could “undermine federal policies.”The Arizona law, signed last week by Gov. Jan Brewer, makes it a state crime to be in Arizona illegally and requires police and other law-enforcement agents to check documents of people they reasonably suspect to be illegal.A new Gallup Poll indicates that 39 percent of Americans support the law, 30 percent oppose it and 31 percent have not heard of it or have no opinion. The telephone survey was taken Tuesday and Wednesday and had a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.Attorney General Eric Holder is reviewing the law’s constitutionality.

Tamar Jacoby, president of the pro-reform ImmigrationWorks USA, has warned that a politically motivated, all-Democratic push for immigration reform could dramatically set back efforts to enact a new comprehensive policy. But she said it’s too soon to write off the latest Senate proposal as a political gambit and remains cautiously optimistic.”There’s still a chance that this isn’t just playing politics with it,” said Jacoby, whose organization backs reform from a center-right, pro-business perspective. “There are signs that they are still making some effort into making it a bipartisan push. Of course, it also still has a chance to go off the rails, but we so far are still walking that fine line.”

Democrats acknowledged they cannot pass the bill without help from at least a handful of Republican senators. House Democratic leaders have said they are waiting for the Senate to take action first.”The urgency of immigration reform cannot be overstated,” Schumer said.

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)