Building a Bridge Over a Wedge Issue

It is a good time to be a progressive populist. The public, particularly independents, generally wants the type of changes that progressives have been advocating: affordable health care, diplomacy first foreign policy, home-grown economic growth through renewable technologies, reducing our impact on the environment. But before giddiness sets in, the battle issue of campaign 2008 will be between policies promoting job growth and immigration policy, as this excerpt from "The Democrats Path to Victory:
The public demand for progressive politics is growing stronger" alludes.

Democracy Corps political strategists Stan Greenberg, Al Quinlan and James Carville. “If 2008 is to bring a tidal wave, Democrats and progressives must become more fully the voice of what is wrong with these times. It is not enough to be anti-Iraq and anti-Bush.”

Democracy Corps polling supports this populist reading of the electorate. Given a list of phrases that reflect both conservative and progressive explanations, the top two choices among people who think the country is off course were “big businesses get whatever they want in Washington” (40 percent) and “leaders have forgotten the middle class” (38 percent).

But Democracy Corps also reports that the populist inclinations of Democrats and independents diverge, giving Republicans a political wedge opportunity. Democratic voters were most concerned about Iraq spending, healthcare inaction, and job loss to China and India. Independents cared most about unprotected borders, oil dependence and job loss. Thus, immigration emerges as a potential political problem for Democratic candidates, even though most Americans reject draconian crackdowns on immigrants.

Current debates about Iraq and globalization—in Congress and among the presidential candidates—show that Democrats have failed to take advantage of this progressive shift in public opinion.

What remains to be seen is how Democrats will defense against what will likely be a Republican onslaught to show how tough they will be to guard our borders and how the Democrats are soft, despite evidence to the contrary (e.g., it is the Democrats that have been the strongest advocates for port authority security). It is true that the Republicans have not been able to hone their message on this issue without seeming like they are foaming at the mouth, but you can bet that by their convention, this issue will be framed so that the middle-of-the-road voter will think this is important.

If I were the Democrats, I would be framing an immigration policy that is both tough and fair being careful not to replicate the plan that Bush has been forwarding, but to use the key pieces that both parties can agree on. Most Americans are not afraid of immigrants, but are afraid of losing their jobs. Whatever the Democrat's plan turns out to be, it had better remember the "jobs, jobs, jobs" mantra that earned the Democrats the White House.