Paul Waldman in the Baltimore Sun has an excellent analysis of what's happening now:
"When Democrats win, we're told it was a matter of circumstance or an unusually skillful candidate. When Republicans win, we're told it was because Americans are becoming more conservative. Why? Because many members of the media have internalized the attacks conservatives have made on them for decades and come to adopt the complimentary conservative picture of what America is all about."
But his take on this election is actually correct:
"The fact is that nearly all the movement in American public opinion in recent decades has been in one direction: to the left. This evolution is precisely why conservatives have grown so angry about the "culture wars" - because they're losing." [more]
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E-mail This StoryTURN ON A TELEVISION anywhere in America last month, and you were sure to come across a campaign ad talking tough about immigration. Democrats and Republicans, in border states and deep in the heartland: Everybody was doing it, and the spots were among the harshest of the campaign season. The A-word--amnesty--was a staple. So were calls for cracking down on the border. And there could be no mistaking the mood, or rather the two parties' shared assumption about the public's mood. The only question was whether Republicans would succeed in riding that anger to victory on Election Day--whether immigration would indeed be the wedge issue of the 2006 midterms.
No one knows how much money was spent on these ads or the websites and mailers that went with them. But the candidates might as well have poured their dollars down a drain. Long before the votes were counted, tracking polls showed that the issue wasn't "working"--wasn't energizing voters or closing the gap between Democratic frontrunners and their GOP opponents. [more]
I'm watching CNN's Combat Hospital and I'm riveted, sickened, and infuriated. Have we learned nothing from Vietnam? This is what the American public needs to see to understand the horrendous pain and suffering we are inflicting in that country and in our soldiers.
Thank you, CNN for this special. I hope parts of it show up in YouTube for all to see
El muro de Bush
El presidente Bush se pronunció en su día contra la construcción de un muro para blindar a la inmigración ilegal, sobre todo la mexicana, la frontera sur de EE UU. Pero los tiempos cambian y las circunstancias también. Y lo que pareció en su momento un proyecto descabellado de los republicanos ultraconservadores ha ido adquiriendo lustre político a medida que han aumentado las dificultades para el inquilino de la Casa Blanca y se aproximan las cruciales elecciones legislativas del 7 de noviembre. Así que Bush, que ahora considera la obra una cuestión de seguridad nacional, ha estampado su firma sobre la ley que autoriza la construcción de 1.125 kilómetros de valla (no se sabe si metálica, de alta tecnología informática o abrumadoramente hormigonada) a lo largo de cuatro Estados sureños para impedir el paso a cerca de medio millón de inmigrantes que lo intentan cada año, algunos al precio de su propia vida.
Quizá el muro de 2.000 millones de dólares no llegue a alzarse nunca, a la vista de la oleada de reclamaciones judiciales y políticas que se anuncia, dentro y fuera de EE UU. La decisión de construirlo ha provocado ya una avalancha de condenas de organizaciones defensoras de los derechos humanos y de gobiernos iberoamericanos, comenzando por el de México, el más afectado.
Washington tiene derecho a asegurar sus fronteras e impedir que sean un coladero, pero la experiencia muestra hasta la saciedad que los muros no son el mejor modo de hacerlo. El fenómeno inmigratorio no es una guerra, aunque electoralmente sea rentable considerarlo como tal. Y no hay valla ni mar capaz de detener la desesperación de millones de personas decididas a encontrar un lugar en el mundo.
Immigration issue doomed GOP
BY ANDRES OPPENHEIMER
ATLANTA -- Hispanics said ''adiós'' to President Bush's Republican Party in Tuesday's midterm elections, voting in much greater numbers than expected for Democratic candidates in an apparent rejection of the ruling party's efforts to blame much of the nation's problems on undocumented migrants.
Contrary to experts' predictions that Hispanics would not turn out massively on Tuesday, exit polls show that Hispanics accounted for 8 percent of the total vote. That is about equal to the Hispanic vote's record turnout in the 2004 presidential election, and much more than its turnout in previous mid-term elections.
What's more, 73 percent of Hispanics voted for the Democratic Party on Tuesday, while only 26 percent voted for Republican candidates, CNN exit poll shows. In the 2004 presidential elections, 55 percent of Hispanics voted Democrat and about 42 percent voted Republican.
Many experts had predicted that Hispanics would not turn out in big numbers on Tuesday, in part because most of the hottest races took place in states with no major Hispanic presence. Also, experts said that it would take until the 2008 elections for the largely Hispanic ''today we march, tomorrow we vote'' protests of earlier this year to translate into the naturalization and registration of large numbers of foreign-born Latino voters.
But the anti-immigration hysteria spearheaded by Republicans in the House -- and by cable television fear mongers such as Pat Buchanan and Lou Dobbs -- irked many U.S.-born Hispanics who normally don't care much about immigration.
Republican sponsorship of a law to build a 700-mile fence along the Mexican border and Republican House members' efforts to pass a bill that would have turned millions of undocumented workers into felons fueled a climate that many Hispanics saw as veiled racism.
THEY WENT TOO FAR
Sure, Republican anti-immigration crusaders said they are only against ''illegal'' immigration, and that they have nothing against Hispanics.
But when they accused Hispanic immigrants of draining Social Security coffers, clogging schools and hospitals, being potential terrorists and bringing infectious diseases into the United States -- I'm not making this up -- millions of Hispanic-heritage U.S. citizens felt insulted. It was as if all Hispanics were suddenly cast as potential national security threats.
If the Republican effort to put immigration at the center stage of the political agenda was aimed at drawing national attention away from Iraq, or to mobilize their constituencies to get out and vote on Tuesday, it didn't work with the general public either.
Exit polls show that when asked which issues were extremely important to them, 42 percent of all voters on Tuesday said corruption and ethics, 40 percent said terrorism, 39 percent mentioned the economy, 37 percent said Iraq, 36 percent said values and 29 percent said illegal immigration.
And many candidates who campaigned on get-tough-against-illegal-immigrants were defeated. Randy Graf, an Arizona Republican who centered his campaign on immigrant bashing and supported the Minuteman vigilante group, was among the many defeated anti-immigration candidates.
Of 15 races where immigration was the center of the debate, tracked by immigration2006.org, 12 were won by immigration moderates and only two by hard-line anti-immigration activists.
Even some Democrats who embraced the anti-immigration cause, such as Tennessee Senate candidate Harold Ford, who accused his Republican rival of having hired illegal immigrants, were defeated.
My opinion: Great! The Republican strategy of blaming undocumented workers for many of the country's ills backfired. Now, with luck, candidates for the 2008 presidential election will abandon the populist enforcement-centered political deceptions of anti-immigration crusaders and seek serious solutions to stop the flow of migrants to the U.S. borders.
INCOME GAP
Instead of backing a useless 700-mile fence, which will only push migrants to enter the United States elsewhere along the 2,000-mile border, they should look into ways of helping reduce the income gap between the United States, Mexico and the rest of Latin America.
As long as the United States' per capita income of $42,000 a year continues to be as far ahead of Mexico's $10,000 a year, or Nicaragua's $2,900 a year, there will be no fences high or wide enough to stop the flow of migrants.
As the European example shows, the only way to reduce migration will be greater economic integration, including offers of aid conditioned to responsible economic policies. Hopefully, both parties will hear this message from Tuesday's vote and turn their backs to the deceptive enforcement-only remedies offered by anti-immigration fear mongers in recent months.
