Sticking with the sports theme, Super Bowl XXVII was played at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena rather than at the Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe because black NFL players refused to play the game in a state that refused to honor Martin Luther King Jr. with a state holiday. Flash forward twenty years and history is repeating itself. This time it is Latino baseball players who are promising to boycott next year’s All-Star Game in Phoenix if Arizona’s new immigration law remains in force.
I am going to assume that the law will not be rescinded, although it may be invalidated by the courts, as the Department of Justice has filed suit against it.
Attorney General Eric Holder said the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Phoenix, came after extensive consultation with law enforcement officials and civil rights groups who oppose the law.
“Setting immigration policy and enforcing immigration laws is a national responsibility,” Holder said. “Seeking to address the issue through a patchwork of state laws will only create more problems than it solves.”
If the case remains unresolved and the law remains in place, Arizona’s loss of the All-Star Game is going to be a rather big news story, and it will really cement the Latino community (acting in solidarity) against the Republican Party on a national level.
I think the courts will probably strike the law down, but I can’t say when they’ll get to it. It’s something to watch, because if Latinos start voting with the same partisan preference as blacks, the Republicans will never be able to compete on a national level and will non-competitive in an increasing number of states.
I think the leaders of the GOP understand this, but they’re either focused on the short-term advantage (Arizona’s law is quite popular overall) or they’re just too scared of their own base to stand up to them.
As someone who’s been voting Democratic since 1978, I am quite pleased with the long-term prospects of my party. We’re due for a bumpy ride come November 2010, although probably not as bad as people want to claim it’ll be, but the futures so bright (changing racial demographics, GOBP’s tone deafness on immigration reform/health care/unemployment/oil companies) I gotta wear shades…
Ruy has been saying that for a decade and the situation has marginally improved or even gotten worse (so that center-right Obama is considered a socialist by a majority of likely voters).
I don’t think we’re getting the whole story. I mean, most people surveyed have no idea what “progressive” means so surely they can’t be well-informed about the term “socialist.” Follow-up questions are needed. For instance: “Can you describe in your own words what a socialist is?” or “Do you have a positive or negative view of Socialism?”
Two things, MNPundit.
First, like it or not, Obama is pretty much in the center of the Democratic Party—based on his voting record in the Illinois and US Senates. That makes him, by my calculation, a center-left politician.
Second, this is the country we have right now. No Socialist Party getting a million votes for president while its candidate is in jail. No domestic Communist Party powerful enough to form a “United Front” with the New Deal and help organize powerful unions in new industries. No powerful labor movement. No “Share Our Wealth” left-wing populist governors threatening to challenge the incumbent president in the 2012 primaries.
You’re assuming a definition of “left” which puts the center of the Democratic Party to the “left”.
Given the global definitions of “left” and “right” politics, the Democratic Party is, in actuality, a center-right party. With Ben Nelson being someone who would be a member of a Conservative party in, say, Canada, the UK or Germany.
So by the US definition, yeah, Obama is a center-left politician. Because that definition presumes that “left” and “right” are defined subjectively by the two political parties and not objectively. By an objective definition the US has a center-right party (Democrats) and a crazy-batshit-holy-shit-how-can-your-country-function right wing party (Republicans). By a global definition, or an objective definition, or by a pre-Clinton era US definition (when the Democratic Party was pulled further to the right as the Republican Party went apeshit rightwing), Obama is center or even center-right.
nonynony, I think we agree more than we disagree.
Obama is a politician operating in today’s United States. In that context, he’s a center-left politician.
In the context of a northern European social democracy, he might be a center-right politician—or he might move further to the left because the political context allows him to.
One key political concept Obama learned as a young organizer was to think of “the world as it is” v. “the world as it should be”. The Gamaliel Foundation, the organizing network he was associated with, valued the notion of operating with a foot in each world—as opposed to retreating to one or the other.
For those of us who see ourselves as being to the left of Obama, one of our major challenges is to build enough social and political power so that the inevitable compromises he makes are closer to our ideals.
P.S. As with all these discussions, it seems to me that eliminating or weakening the filibuster in the US Senate would do more than any other single action to advance a progressive agenda.
Does left/center/right even have a meaning in the context of an idiocracy that’s in a terminal nosedive? This country has never been Europe or even Japan in terms of the global political spectrum. Most of our history we’ve been just a hair to the left of outright fascism.
You are assuming that Latinos will just hand over their votes to the Democratic Party in the same way that African Americans have. I suspect Latinos will be far shrewder political power players and not be gamed by plantation politics of either party. They are not going to form a one-way allegiance to the Democratic party based on a false sense of grattitude. There are growing signs they will adopt a “what can you do for me attitude?” And the Republican Party will pay a long-term price for their hostility towards Latinos, but I suspect in the next few election cycle they are going to teach Democrats a lesson or two about indifference and betrayal. Pay back is a bitch.
So, you’re saying Latinos are shrewder than Blacks? You want to expand on this?
You don’t think much of black people, do you? You’re definitely prone to spouting racist memes about the black electorate.
Like all other Americans, Latinos are stuck with the crappy 2-party system. I can’t think of anything “shrewd” about voting Republican, which is their only alternative to the Dems, just like everybody else. Voting GOP would mark them as insane. Is that what you think of Latinos?
Blacks don’t vote Democratic based on a false sense of gratitude, it’s a simple matter of ants refusing to vote for the aardvark party…
fuck ’em all. all-star game or no all-star game
Well, the polls appear to be on their side on the AZ issue. That’s all that matters to them. Issue polls about stuff few Americans know anything about are absolutely worthless and toxic, but they are what the Beltway lives by.
Do you really think this lame obscenity of a Supreme Court will strike down this law? I see them doing yet another 180 turn and deciding they loves them them states’ rights after all.
I think the leaders of the GOP understand this,
That’s the one part of “The Math” that Turdblossom did understand. But the horse is out of the barn now.
Would love to be a fly on the wall listening to Sharon Angle & her ilk as are schooled on how to make the Latino sale to the teabaggers.
Motivated minorities roll apathetic majorities all the time in politics. This is why the GOP FUD machine (Fear, Uncertainty and Dread) is as much designed to get you to throw up one’s hands in despair and not vote, as to vote for them.
This is also why the eternal, post-1972 Democratic race to see who turns bluest as they hold their breath until declared purest of them all is even more disastrous than usual.