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One of the things I'm generally intrigued by in politics is behind-the-scenes stories of how things actually get done. After Obama won re-election in 2012, I remember reading stories like The Data Miners: Tech Secrets From Obama’s Re-Election Geek Squad and Inside the Secret World of the Data Crunchers Who Helped Obama Win about the national team of "statisticians and organizers and analysts" assembled to pull off what ended up being one of the greatest and most dramatic re-elections I can remember. There's something about that Oceans 11-y edge to politics that transfixes me.
Yesterday, the New York Times published an article with a bland title, White House Tested Limits of Powers Before Action on Immigration, that belies a sexy premise:
Months before President Obama took executive action last week to reshape the nation’s immigration system, Jeh C. Johnson, the secretary of Homeland Security, quietly convened a small group of advisers to explore the legal limits of the president’s powers.
Working in secrecy, Mr. Johnson’s team huddled for hours each day under orders to use “our legal authorities to the fullest extent” on a new deportations policy, a senior administration official said. In five White House meetings over the summer, Mr. Johnson and Mr. Obama, both lawyers, pored over proposed changes together, eventually concluding that the president had the authority to enact changes that could affect millions of people and significantly alter the way immigration laws are enforced.
First of all, immigration reform is massively big news, but the fact that Obama had to find a workaround that took months of secret, imperturbable, daily work to deduce and enact makes that news even more amazing. That Obama didn't even "[want] to be in the position of taking executive action" as "it was not the way he wanted to fix the system” but “at the end of the day...felt this was the only option he had” and got to work to make that option feasible is the kind of stuff that fills documentaries, inspires young people to run for office, and makes one grab buckets of popcorn to celebrate what can only be the sheer rage felt by Boehner and company as well as its recently emboldened supporters:
The decision has infuriated Republicans just as they take full control of Capitol Hill — “We will not stand idle as the president undermines the rule of law in our country,” Speaker John A. Boehner pledged this month — although it remains unclear how the new Congress will react.
That's because there's nothing the new Congress
can do. The Executive Orders are 100% legal and fully within the scope of influence a President--any President--is able to wield. Obama just figured out a way to wield the power in a way that helps working individuals and families instead of corporations and the rich. I love it when Democrats work within the realm of the possible to hamstring Republican efforts to stop our inevitable march towards fairness and equality under the law and the arc's decidedly slow but perceptible bend towards justice.
Anyhow, the article sheds additional light on what ultimately forced Obama to go (such sweet, sweet irony) rogue. Apparently, Obama pressed Boehner for six straight months for an immigration bill that would actually help the 11 million undocumented workers in the country and not just beef up border security. Every time Boehner visited the White House, Obama and his aides tackled the mercurial Speaker to discuss immigration. Unfortunately, Boehner dragged his feet--no surprises there--and a cauldron of Democrats eyeing re-election opted to put their personal needs above party efforts, imploring Obama to make no immigration-related announcements. Thankfully, "most of those Democratic senators lost anyway."
Now Republicans, ahead of the 2016 election, have lost any ace in the hole they might have otherwise claimed in order to court the Hispanic vote, and Obama has, in the course of also doing the right thing, delivered an additional political gift to the Democratic party. More importantly, it's a gift to millions of families who can now focus on raising their young without the pervasive fear that they'll be separated or deported.
File this one under, "Thanks, Obama."
You can read the full scoop over at the NYT.