Senate passes immigration reform.

[Brandon Rhea]

http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/27/politics/immigration/index.html

The Senate passed the immigration reform bill 68-32. The House has already said lolno.

 

[BLADE]

Prospero News Bureau: News Today, Olds Tomorrow

 

[Genkaku]

Strategically its a good move for Dems. If they keep throwing some kind of reform for immigration at the House the midterms could get stickier for the GOP due to it being constantly in the spotlight.

Couple that with abortion bills flying around in the states, and the outrage over the recent rulings and it pretty well eviscerates the GOP's "outreach" attempts.

As for actually passing, unless somehow the older GOP reps who aren't Tea Party people decide to break and go with it in an attempt to look good for immigrants I don't see a snowball's chance in hell of this passing. Barring of course some kind of deal the Dems make with the Reps, but they'd be insane to make any major deals now really since the GOP is in the news cycle almost constantly with bad vibes...especially about the immigration reform stuff.

Rubio recently catching major flak from Tea Party and being called a RINO by some makes this even more unlikely for them to break on this.

 

[Brandon Rhea]

Don't count on the midterms swinging for the Democrats. It's possible but not very probable. Given how gerrymandered districts are, Democrats would need to win the popular vote by around 7% to take back the House. Keep in mind that popular vote =/= control of the House. The Democrats won the popular vote in 2012, but they're still the minority.

 

[Genkaku]

True, the gerrymandering is a big problem, although given how crazy and wild some of the GOP are getting it might hopefully fire up some places. Not sure if it is enough though for the midterms, but with some luck a few of the weaker holdouts might shift and get a more even split in House and state legislatures.

Wendy Davis is definitely getting a stir going in Texas and her district was pretty harshly gerrymandered and she still won.

It really is going to come down to keeping things like womens reproductive rights and immigration up a bit to show how just raw BAD alot of the GOP are, it also doesn't help that it is becoming apparent that the GOP controlled legislatures crapped on some states who were showing a nice recovery and growth (ohio being one who was coming along then dropped like a stone because gov and policies were bad.)

And immigration reform is a good one to get baddies on record crushing on, it helps to fire up the hispanic community certainly, and those sympathetic to them.

 

[Brandon Rhea]

Wendy Davis said she has gubernatorial ambitions. It'd be interesting to see if she ran against Rick Perry.

 

[Genkaku]

I would be interested to see it, she definitely has a good fired up base behind her if she does.

Not to mention it would be WEIRD to get a Dem gov in texas if she goes for that, and might work toward turning the state purple instead of bright red.