Backing 700-mile fence could put Obama up against wall in '08
Republicans were running out of time to do anything about the double-edged sword of undocumented immigration and dreaded having to go and campaign for re-election without having passed some semblance of immigration reform. So, together with Obama and other weak-kneed Democrats, they voted to build a wall, presumably knowing full well that a wall would only make illegal immigration more difficult, more dangerous and more expensive, while doing nothing to curb the flow of undocumented immigrants or making our borders more secure. They were wrong and so was Obama.
Republicans paid dearly for it in 2006 and Obama could pay dearly too in 2008.
But Obama was not about to get outflanked on the immigration issue. He thought voters, especially those to the right of center, would prefer a hard-liner on undocumented immigration, so be it, even if pandering to the right was wrong. Hard-liners fared poorly in the November election and they will again in 2008.
The clearest example of this was the congressional race in Arizona's 8th District, where the incumbent Jim Kolbe was not seeking re-election. Kolbe was an original co-sponsor of the McCain-Kennedy immigration reform bill, along with Illinois Rep. Luis Gutierrez. Obviously, Kolbe was not a hard-liner, but the Republican trying to succeed him, Randy Graf, was. In a supposedly safe Republican district, Graf came out hard for the wall and lost with only 42.2 percent of the vote.
It is interesting to note that five of the six Republican senators who lost on Nov. 7 voted for the wall, as did the 30 Republican House members whose losses gave the Democrats control of both chambers. Obama's Mexican-American friends have tried to tell him that he should not have voted for the wall. But he won't listen, so perhaps he can read. The writing is on the wall.
Mexican-American leaders have called on Obama to repudiate his vote and make things right. But Obama merely says "let's move on." He obviously does not get it.
Obama likes to remind his Mexican-American friends that he wasn't the only Democrat who voted for the wall, and that's true. Twenty-six Democratic senators made the same mistake, including presidential wannabes Hillary Clinton, Joseph Biden and Christopher Dodd and former hopeful Evan Bayh. Democrats with conviction like Dick Durbin, Bob Menendez and Harry Reid voted nay.
The problem is that Obama has larger Mexican and Mexican-American constituencies in Illinois than his Democratic rivals have in New York, Delaware, Connecticut and Indiana combined, and most have family or friends in major states like California, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Texas. If Obama decides to run for president in 2008, he should not expect to find any enthusiastic Mexican-American welcome wagons along the campaign trail, but he can expect questions from the media at every stop about his vote for the wall. His vote for the wall will become as divisive in his campaign as it will become between Mexico and the United States.
Obama has a lot going for him at the moment and he should milk it for all it is worth, but coming to grips with his Mexican and Mexican-American problem could be the dose of reality that he really needs. Denial is not a good strategy for planning, let alone running.
Juan Andrade Jr. is president of the U.S. Hispanic Leadership Institute.