With all the attention in the midterm election squarely focused on the toss-up races in the fight for control of the U.S. Senate (and a few key gubernatorial races) some important results were missed.
Among those is the fact that heavily blue Oregon, which expanded its Democrat margin of control in the state legislature and also passed a measure legalizing recreational marijuana use.
Yet, what was missed by most is that that same heavily Democrat voter base also voted down a ballot measure–by 66%–that would give driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants.
Given President Obama’s threats perhaps as early as this week to hand down some sort of executive action that might legalize the millions of illegal immigrants in the country provides an interesting backdrop for a battle that could easily take us into a single-issue election cycle for 2016.
When asked whether amnesty would be of benefit to Democrats, former President Bill Clinton boldly chided the party for not acting on it in during the midterm cycle, “There was a collapse of the youth vote, the African-American vote held fairly steady. We had a little bit of a loss of the Hispanic vote, perhaps because the President didn’t issue the immigration order.”
Whether some sort of amnesty move by Democrats would result in a net electoral benefit among Hispanic voters remains to be seen, but the assumption made by President Clinton, President Obama and even some Republicans appears to discount the role played by many potentially disaffected Democrat voters, particularly in the rural areas, who may revolt in the face of amnesty.
