Could the Immigration Issue Hurt the Democrats?

The usual procedure after a big showdown like the immigration bill that was just withdrawn in the US Senate is that it means bad news for the Republican Party.  Remember how the gender gap has always been a Republican problem, not a Democratic problem.

Of course, the withdrawal of the bill by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, writes Julie Hirschfeld Davis provoked the usual response. 

The defeat set off a bitter round of partisan recriminations, with Democrats and Republicans each accusing the other of killing it.

Oh well, I guess we will all survive it.

But it is clear that US politics is entering the post-Bush era, and it is also evident that the tectonic plates are shifting.

The interesting thing about immigration is that it is Republicans who are most opposed.  Yet you would think that rank-and-file Democrats would have the most at stake and be the most damaged by competition from low-wage immigrants. 

What gives?  Why don’t we hear from the Democratic rank-and-file?  My feeling is that lunch-bucket Democrats don’t have a direct voice in politics.  They are only represented by elite-led interest groups like organized labor and AARP.  The netroots operate at the individual level, but they are clearly college-educated liberals, not ordinary workers. 

Theda Skocpol, defenestrator of Larry Summers, wrote about this in Diminished Democracy.  She realizes that modern democratic politics is conducted by memberless cadre lobbying groups.  In the old days politics was driven by the leaders of big membership organizations.

You could argue, of course, that the reason the Republican Party picked up a majority in the past quarter century was because unhappy Democrats could never get their leaders to listen to them.  As elite anti-war liberals and feminists talked to each other about liberal issues Reagan Democrats left them on national security and patriotism and religious Democrats left them on abortion and school prayer.

Suppose that in the next few years secure-border Democrats leave the party on the issue of immigration.  Is it possible?  Who knows?  Nobody ever asked the rank-and-file Democrats for their opinion.