Stop agonizing about the immigration reform bill

A lot of people in the political world are closely following the various machinations to (a) pass, or (b) block, a real immigration reform bill.

And it’s kinda overblown. The bill doesn’t matter as much as you think it does.

Let’s assume the conservatives manage to block real reform. It’s certainly possible in this climate. Assume that all those millions of people never get that path toward citizenship and the voting booth. What happens then?

Well, let’s see. Each year, the total Latino population goes up about 800,000.

(a) Some is due to legal immigration.
(b) Some is due to illegal immigration.
(c) Some is due to children born legally to legal immigrants and residents.
(d) Some is due to children born legally to illegal immigrants (there are a total of 4 million of them).

Even if no meaningful immigration bill is passed, the first two groups (a) and (b) will have kids who will be legal voters in 20 years, and some of the (a) people will themselves naturalize much sooner; the second two groups (c) and (d) will themselves be legal voters in 20 years. And this has already been going on, for years.

Furthermore, this is the net gain: these four categories actually total more than 800,000 because they must replace all the Latinos who die off. Most of the new additions are legal; the people who die off include a lot of illegals. So that will make the net increase in legal Latinos even larger.

In other words, even if no immigration reform bill is passed, the Latino vote grows by a several hundred thousand a year.

So every four years, the Latino vote increases by about three million. Since they go 70-30 for liberal candidates, the liberals gain another million votes every presidential election, even if they do nothing and accomplish nothing, just from the Latino electorate. In twenty years, the liberals will have an extra five-point cushion that they don’t have now, just because of Latino demographics. Texas and Arizona will turn purple, Florida and Colorado will go blue, and the White House will get bluer and bluer.

If Congress passes any sort of plan involving a path to citizenship for the 10-12 million illegals, the numbers will just shift that much faster.

So the conservatives can slow down the tide of immigration reform, and delay the arrival of those 10-12 million in the voting booth. But in doing so, they will also ensure that both the current legal voters, and the illegals who will be legal voters years later, will all hate the loony right that much more. Which will cancel out a lot of the gain the conservatives would realize, by delaying reform.

There are other reasons why the tide is moving toward the liberals, beyond the Latino issue.

The high tide of the Reagan Revolution is over, a victim of its own success. They got to do everything their way during the Bush era, and the American people saw insane deficits and deregulation, destructively messianic foreign policies, and pointless holy wars on social issues. The American people aren’t buying the old conservative sheet music, and the only new music the rightwing loons have is….we hate liberals! And blacks and Latinos and gays and women and…..

And even though they’ve clearly stayed in the saddle too long, they are actually doubling down their bets in the state legislatures, fighting holy wars to stop abortion and contraception and gay marriage and unions, and voting by anybody who isn’t white. They have overplayed their hand. Which is already backfiring.

And they have driven out party members who could have talked them out riding over the political cliff. RINO hunts!

Soon they will not be able to run on an anti-Obama where’s-your-birth-certificate platform. They tried one last gasp with the recent wave of fake “scandals”, and…Obama’s numbers are up and the GOP’s numbers are down.

The economy is improving. In summer 2014 we will hit a milestone: due to slow but steady job growth, we will finally gain back all the jobs we lost in the five years since Bush crashed the economy. The GOP has spent five years trying to wreck the economy just to make Obama look bad, and even there they failed. This means more votes for liberals.

The base of the conservative movement is, what’s the phrase? Aging off the system. They’re damn old. To give you one indication: today the older Christians, who dominate Christianity in America, are 47 percent conservative, 12 percent liberal. But among their grandchildren, there are actually more liberal young Christians than conservative young Christians. So in a decade or two, the rightwing loons will even lose their grip on Christianity: as the current generation of religious crazies dies off, all that remains is to deprogam their kids. So the last bastion of Conservative Crazy – the churches -- will be besieged and defeated. And by that time, the battles on gays and abortion, which had been energizing the base, will be almost over.

So the conservatives can finally be destroyed in  this country. If all the liberal and moderate groups – blacks, Latinos, gays, women, atheists, agnostics, people with brains – if they unite, organize and vote, the conservative movement is over.

So by all means, try to pass immigration reform. But don’t jump off a bridge if it fails – it’s still going to be alright.

And for those who are still following the immigration issue closely, here’s dessert:

Christopher Simcox, the big-name founder of the Minutemen and leader of their effort to hunt down Latinos in the Southwest, the guy who actually ran for the Senate, was finally nailed not only for domestic violence but also molesting children. Two six year olds and a five year old. Even the other Minutemen, now splintering and falling apart without ever accomplishing anything, are distancing themselves from him.

***UPDATE***

For the 1st time in history Univision is the #1 network during July sweeps with both Adults 18-49 AND 18-34, beating ABC NBC CBS & FOX
— @lourdesmeluza