Why Hillary Clinton Took Big Risk Backing Obama’s Immigration Order

President Obama isn’t doing Hillary Clinton any favors with an executive order on immigration and nuclear diplomacy with Iran. (Jewel Samad/AFP)

Hillary Clinton issued a rare statement Thursday following President Obama announcing he was signing an executive order on immigration. While it is clear camp Hillary feels it will help her chances in the 2016 Democratic nomination process, the chance it will doom her general election prospects is a real possibility.

“I support the President’s decision to begin fixing our broken immigration system and focus finite resources on deporting felons rather than families,” Clinton’s statement read. “I was hopeful that the bipartisan bill passed by the Senate in 2013 would spur the House of Representatives to act, but they refused even to advance an alternative.”

Following the Democratic Party’s historic defeat in the 2014 midterm elections, many of the party’s few remaining centrists looked to Hillary to win back working class whites in the North and Midwest, which overwhelmingly broke for the Republican Party. However, the president’s action on immigration is deeply and broadly unpopular among large majority blocs of the American public, including a significant number of Democrats.

“This move is widely unpopular with the American people,” said Democratic pollster, Pat Cadell. “And that includes a large number of white and black Democrats.”

So, why would Hillary Clinton risk further alienating working class whites?

First, as we previously reported, the Democratic Party largely believes that Northern and Midwestern white voters are not coming back in at least the short-term. That is the reason — the sole reason — for Obama’s astonishing reversal on whether he had the authority to issue an executive order on immigration. The party believes they need to “find new voters” among undocumented workers.

But, according to aides, Clinton still believes she can bridge the gap between working class whites and the ever-left-leaning Democratic Party. However, winning over lost white voters in a general election is a secondary challenge. She must first overcome a nomination process that is dominated by the most radical left elements of the party, and find acceptance in circles that would prefer self-described democratic-socialists Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

Speaking of dominating, Clinton is certainly doing so in early 2016 Democratic nomination polls. However, early surveys offer little predictive value and, if history is any guide at all, it tells us that 1) no presidential hopeful is ever going to walk through a party nomination contest and, 2) Hillary has been here before.

Clinton was also the perceived frontrunner in the 2008 Democratic nomination before she was railroaded by the more radical leftwing, which backed a junior senator polling around “–” by this time. Following George W. Bush’s impressive performance among black voters in 2004, as well as a dominating performance among Northern and Midwestern whites, a deep concern among Democratic strategists began to grow. Not only did many Democratic strategists worry that Hillary could not generate enough excitement to reign in black voters who strayed from the Democratic coalition, but also that her appeal to whites was weaker than her husband’s.

Basically, Mrs. Clinton is between a rock and a hard place. She knows what I also explained in a recent article titled Top Midterm Myth: Low Turnout Doomed Democrats, which is that — if the eventual 2016 nominee intends to put his or her head in the sand by chocking up their losses to low turnout — then they are going to lose, plain and simple. Demographics will not save Democrats in 2016 against modest Republican inroads among minorities and reclaiming this particular bloc of white voters, as we saw them do in 2014.

Yet, ultimately, none of that even matters if she cannot secure the nomination. As events of the remaining two years of President Obama’s presidency unfold, we are likely to see Hillary continue to learn this delicate dance. Her challenge will be keeping the trust and excitement of her base, without further alienating working class whites. To Mrs. Clinton, I say good luck with that. As of now, I am of the mind that it is an impossible task.

Sure, it’s true. I am just a lowly analyst at the Internet’s most accurate election projection model of 2014, so, “what difference at this point does” my analysis “make?”

Read full statement released by Hillary Clinton:

I support the President’s decision to begin fixing our broken immigration system and focus finite resources on deporting felons rather than families. I was hopeful that the bipartisan bill passed by the Senate in 2013 would spur the House of Representatives to act, but they refused even to advance an alternative. Their abdication of responsibility paved the way for this executive action, which follows established precedent from Presidents of both parties going back many decades. But, only Congress can finish the job by passing permanent bipartisan reform that keeps families together, treats everyone with dignity and compassion, upholds the rule of law, protects our borders and national security, and brings millions of hard-working people out of the shadows and into the formal economy so they can pay taxes and contribute to our nation’s prosperity. Our disagreements on this important issue may grow heated at times, but I am confident that people of good will and good faith can yet find common ground. We should never forget that we’re not discussing abstract statistics – we’re talking about real families with real experiences. We’re talking about parents lying awake at night afraid of a knock on the door that could tear their families apart, people who love this country, work hard, and want nothing more than a chance to contribute to the community and build better lives for themselves and their children.