After 100 whole days, I must say President Obama has done as much as would be expected from a Democrat. A recent poll stated that Americans seem to like how he has juggled domestic and international issues; however, there is one issue he has yet to truly push–Comprehensive Immigration Reform.
Given that Arlen Specter is now siding with the Democrats, and although he states he won’t be 100% on our side, I must say he’s not too bad on immigration reform. In fact, he’s probably better than dumbocrats like the Buzzcut from Montana, the Mouth that Ate Mizzou, and others. He’s surely better than Rep. Massa from New York who is freaking out and wants to seal the boundary. So, some on the pro-migrant side may seem a little excited about Specter. American Prospect’s Dana Goldstein, though, not so much.
Alongside President Bush, Arlen Specter was a consistent Republican supporter of comprehensive immigration reform. Given the Obama administration’s recent murmuring about prioritizing the issue — a commitment some have doubted — the loss of bipartisan support could represent a setback for immigrants’ rights.
Of course, when he was a Republican, Specter did have a pretty idiotic idea.
Specter wrote a Washington Post op-ed outlining a third approach he believed would gain more GOP support: giving green cards to the nation’s 12 million undocumented immigrants, but withholding citizenship and the right to vote. That, of course, would prevent an influx to Democratic Party voting rolls.
Now that he’s a Democrat, will this change?
What I hope is that he will show some leadership, support at the very least the original Kennedy plan, and show the dumbocrats how to vote. And, apparently, I’m not the only one that names names of dumbocrats.
On the Democratic side, a number of senators from swing and Rust Belt states voted against comprehensive immigration reform in 2007, including Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Jim Webb of Virginia, Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, and Jon Tester and Max Baucus of Montana.
As always, even with President Obama in office, I’ll take a wait and see attitude while expecting some true progressivism from my Party on comprehensive immigration reform.
So, given that President Obama has juggled things nicely, yet he has pussy-footed around comprehensive immigration reform, I’ll give him a B+.
Work on it, Mr. Prez.
