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07/26/2003 Archived Entry: "howard dean, meet peter brimelow"

HOWARD DEAN, MEET PETER BRIMELOW: Although we often hear about how the "gender gap" and a failure to "reach out" to minority voters hurts Republicans, one of the biggest obstacles Democrats have faced in recent years is their abysmal standing among white males, particularly of the working-class variety that formed the backbone of their party for decades following the New Deal.

In the latest issue of The American Conservative, executive editor Scott McConnell argues that Dean - an insurgent candidate popular among the antiwar left and first-time voters who nevertheless intrigues many nonliberals - could avoid the fate of, say, George McGovern if he rectifies this situation. How to do it? By embracing immigration reform.

It's an interesting thesis and a helpful reminder of the good liberal arguments for reforming and reducing immigration. But I don't think the issue will work for Dean for three reasons. First, he is trying to get the nomination by appealing to some of the most politically correct folks in the Democratic Party. To do so, he is going to have to live down the fact that he was something less than a fire-breathing liberal as governor of Vermont and that he has a record on gun control that won him high ratings from those gun-toting bogeymen in the NRA. He simply can't afford to take another risk with the left by opposing them on immigration. Yes, there are solid old-time liberal arguments for limiting immigration but, as Peter Brimelow observed in Alien Nation, today's liberals are differently motivated.

Second, like Ralph Nader Dean is already a candidate with an appeal to white liberals but no strong ties to the minority voters who today form the Democrats' most crucial constituency. There is a powerful case to be made that American minority groups would benefit from immigration reform. But it is very easy to botch this case, especially in the context of trying to increase white male support, and in the process alienate minorities rather than make common cause with them. Third, and perhaps most importantly, it assumes that a single issue - immigration - can take precedence over all the other issues that have driven white males away from the Democrats toward the Republican Party. Dean is to the right of his national party on guns, but he isn't going to be able to run to the right of President Bush. He is a quintessential East Coast cultural liberal. And the very positions on war and foreign policy that make him interesting to The American Conservative make him seem weak on national security to the groups Dean would be trying to win over by becoming an immigration reformer.

For these reasons, I doubt Dean will take McConnell's advice and I'm not sure it would work for him if he did.