President Obama gambled that delaying executive action on immigration reform would preserve Democratic control of the Senate.
He lost.
And he may have lost even more than the upper chamber, further eroding Democrats’ standing with Hispanics who have grown increasingly disillusioned with his presidency.
Polling data from a number of states shows that Latinos widely stayed home on Election Day, citing the president’s lack of unilateral action on immigration as a major reason for not showing up to support Democrats.
Although Obama is promising executive action by the end of year, some immigration reform supporters argue that alone won’t solve his problem with Hispanics.
“He can’t just wave a magic wand and expect Latinos to forget what has happened these last few months,” said one immigration advocate who has attended multiple meetings with White House officials on possible reforms. “He made an obvious political play and got burned for it — just like we said he would. Obviously, executive action would help, but it’s going to take a lot of time for him to earn back that trust.”
Hispanics overwhelmingly chose Democrats over Republicans in the midterm elections, just not at the rate needed to get progressives elected in low-turnout contests.
The White House is banking that by the time 2016 rolls around, Hispanic voters will be highly motivated to support Democrats again.
“One way that the president can generate results to the American people is to take this kind of common-sense, substantive action that will be good for the economy, will be good for the deficit, will be good for strengthening our border and will be good for dealing with the millions of immigrants to this country that are currently in the shadows,” said White House press secretary Josh Earnest on Thursday.
But the White House is still struggling to explain why the president is waiting so long to act if he feels such action would benefit the country.
It’s a question that some analysts say Obama can’t answer without admitting he succumbed to political pressures from vulnerable Democrats.
“Damage has been done,” said Matt Barreto, a pollster for the research group Latino Decisions.
“The president has an opportunity to rebuild to get back to 2012 numbers, but you had an unenthusiastic Latino electorate on Tuesday,” he added. “This delay did not help anyone.”
A poll conducted by Barreto’s group found that 60 percent of non-voting Latinos in 2014 said they stayed home, at least in part, because of the president’s lack of executive action.
And Barreto said that if Obama takes just modest action on immigration, rather than issuing both temporary work permits and the deferral of deportations for millions of people living in the U.S. illegally, he should expect a continual cold shoulder from Latinos.
For their part, Republicans are also in an awkward spot.
They have warned the president not to go it alone on immigration, but they also must improve their standing with Latinos heading into the 2016 election.
Republicans saw marginal gains among Hispanic voters in a handful of states in the 2014 contests. Still, GOP insiders say they must significantly bolster their outreach in those communities and can’t get overly satisfied with the results from the midterms.
“I understand their opposition — and administrative action would be a temporary solution that could be done away with by future presidents,” said Alfonso Aguilar, executive director of the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles, of GOP leaders. “The way to resolve this is through legislation. What they can’t do is say, “This is wrong,’ and not offer something to counter the president. They can’t fall into that trap. It’s not a smart political strategy.”
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., one of the few conservatives to back immigration reform in the upper chamber, on Thursday urged a similar middle ground for Republicans. However, the plea likely fell on deaf ears at the White House.
“I literally am pleading with the president of the United States not to act,” the Arizona senator said on MSNBC. “Give it a chance. We’ve got a new Congress. We’ve got a new mandate. Let’s let the House of Representatives decide if they want to move forward on immigration reform or not.”
