The Hill reports that vulnerable House and Senate Democrats want to focus more on the economy and “skip the party’s controversial legislative agenda.” Rather than safeguarding their reelection bids, these Democrats are more likely shooting themselves in the foot by deliberately sidestepping issues like immigration reform and climate change which helped Obama win the White House and put many of them in office.

In a Huffington Post column posted today, political strategist Robert Creamer offered Democrats four pieces of invaluable advice in preparation for next year’s midterm elections. Yellow-bellied Democrats should apply some of Creamer’s “lessons learned” to the immigration debate before passing up a golden opportunity to craft and pass progressive immigration reform in a Democratic-controlled Congress:

1. “First and foremost, the results show that it is critical that the Democratic message be framed in populist terms.”

Creamer explains that yesterday’s election results represent a referendum on incumbents — or candidates from the incumbent party — who failed to present themselves as populist “agents of change who will return economic power to average Americans.”

Backing away from the immigration issue isn’t going to do anything but reinforce the status quo. Democrats can and should talk about immigration reform in economic terms. For example, they could mention that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006 would have generated $66 billion in new revenue during 2007-2016 if right-wingers hadn’t blocked it. Legalizing undocumented immigrants wouldn’t just generate more tax revenue, it would also level the playing field for all workers and improve wages and working conditions in industries that currently exploit immigrant labor. Meanwhile, shutting the door on high-skilled immigrants could drive the world’s best and brightest away from contributing to and growing the US economy.

2. “Independent voters will demand that Democrats deliver on our promise of change.”

Creamer points out that independents are impatient and need to see “some serious evidence” of change. He specifically lists immigration reform as one of the battles Democrats are going to have to win in addition to passing legislation that stimulates the economy. The nation’s immigration system has been broken for a long time and Democrats could win a lot of points for being the Party that finally fixes it.

3). “Democrats must inspire the base.”

Latino and immigrant voters make up a growing and powerful voting bloc that in 2008 came out in droves to support Obama and helped flip red states blue. Latinos overwhelmingly favored Democrats in hopes of seeing major improvements in their communities. Much of the political success of the current Congress and administration hinges on its ability to deliver comprehensive immigration reform and in turn make life-long Democrats out of Latino and immigrant voters.

4. “Our not-so-secret weapon in 2010 is the Republican circular firing squad.”

The right-wing’s self-destructive tendency is especially evident in the immigration debate. Right-wing anti-immigrant demagoguery tarnished the Republican brand during the 2007 immigration debate. The GOP is now viewed amongst Latino and immigrant voters as having created a climate of undeterred public immigrant-bashing that brought nativism into the mainstream. Some Republicans are trying to clean up the Party’s image, but one doesn’t have to look very far to realize that it’s probably going to be a while before the GOP is able to purge itself of its nativist fringe. Old habits die hard, and right-wing anti-immigrant rhetoric will probably lose hardline Republicans some votes without any Democratic interference.

But Creamer warns that Democrats can’t count on it. Actions speak louder than words and despite the fact that it’s progressives who created the “deep well of desire for real change in America,” their majority is by no means guaranteed if they don’t have the guts to go after it.

Defending recent suggestions that National Iranian American Council director Trita Parsi is an instrument of Iran, Reihan Salaam doubles down on one of the hoariest of hoary old conservative foreign policy arguments:

[W]hile Parsi is undoubtedly a believer in democratic liberalism who wants to see Iran radically reform its institutions, he objectively serves Iranian interests insofar as he discourages Western efforts to exert pressure on the regime. This doesn’t make Parsi a bad person. Plenty of Iranian dissidents believe that a democratic Iran should have a nuclear deterrent. Plenty want a denuclearized Iran, yet believe that Western pressure amounts to a kind of imperialism that should be actively resisted. This isn’t that complicated.

Iran doesn’t have an actual AIPAC. Instead, there is a loose network of policy scholars, activists, think tanks, civil servants, etc., who strongly oppose a forward-leaning U.S. policy in the Persian Gulf for a wide, sometimes overlapping variety of reasons. Some of these people have a real financial interest in a better relationship between Washington and Qom [sic], but most don’t. On some issues, members of this loose network get important things right. A lot of realists have raised important questions about the efficacy of sanctions, and they are right to do so. But it’s also true that these voices help today’s Iran. The Iranians among them have added credibility.

Remember when people who opposed the Iraq war — that is, the people who turned out to be right — were accused of being “objectively pro-Saddam“? They didn’t want the U.S. to invade Iraq, and neither did Saddam!

By this reasoning, those in favor of the Iraq war — that is, those who supported what I guess Reihan defines as “a forward-leaning U.S. policy in the Persian Gulf” — “objectively served Iran’s interests” insofar as the war removed Iran’s most hated foe and produced an Iraqi government dominated by Iran’s Shia Islamist clients. This isn’t that complicated. But it is very, very silly.

What is complicated, however, is answering the question of whose interests in Iran, exactly, would be served by further sanctions, or undermined by continued engagement. Reihan writes about “Iran” as if it were one group of people with one set of interests, but of course this is not the case, especially post-June 12.

For example, it’s pretty clear that the gasoline sanctions bill currently wending its way through Congress would hurt the Iranian people while benefiting the Revolutionary Guardsmen who control large portions of the Iranian black market. Does this make all of those who voted for and support the bill objectively pro-IRGC? I doubt anyone would say so. “Objectively pro-Evildoer X” arguments tend to apply only to those who don’t believe that “a forward-leaning U.S. policy” has to necessarily entail unilateral escalation and confrontation.

Our guest blogger is Brian Katulis, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

An interesting effort at the Pentagon caught my attention in recent weeks: the “Afghanistan-Pakistan Hands Program.” Introduced earlier this year, the program raises broader questions about the emerging Obama doctrine on U.S. national security and the right balance of resources between military and non-military efforts.

Yochi Dreazen at the Wall Street Journal mentioned the program in this article earlier last month (calling it the “Afghan Hands”), and this recent article on the Pentagon’s website provides more details.

The program seeks to bring officers from all of the military services to serve for 3-5 years on Afghanistan and Pakistan. The overall aim is to promote greater focus and continuity on these countries as well as reduce the steep learning curve facing personnel on language and cultural issues when they land in Afghanistan. The program has 300 billets, including 121 new positions. Military personnel who enter the program would have their assignments focused on the Af-Pak region of the world –so after serving on the ground, they would rotate to positions in the Defense Department that are focused on this part of the world. The training would include several weeks of language training in Pashto, Dari, and Urdu, as well as combat training. And the Pentagon has stated that those who enter the program won’t be penalized in terms of advancement and seniority – easier said than done with the sometimes rigid bureaucratic procedures governing such a large group of personnel.

The idea for the program emanated from the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s review of Afghanistan strategy that General Stanley McChrystal chaired before he became the current top U.S. commander in Afghanistan.

Obama administration officials are careful to note the obvious – that this program could be scaled back if the commander-in-chief decides to move to a strategy that includes a more modest military footprint in Afghanistan. I doubt that the creation of this program signals all that much about what President Obama will decide in the coming weeks, beyond restating the obvious that we’re seeing a recalibration of more resources to Afghanistan and Pakistan and that the center of gravity for U.S. policy in the broader Middle East and South Asia is shifting eastward.

Two questions I had about the Af-Pak Hands Program:

1. Why did it take eight years to come up with this idea? I don’t find it a particularly innovative idea that America might want to know something about the countries where it sends tens of thousands of soldiers and Marines and spends billions of taxpayer dollars. There are more tactical questions such as whether a few weeks of language training are really enough – as an Arabic speaker, I know how hard it is to develop and then maintain the language skills. The creation and existence of this program demonstrates the gap that exists between what counterinsurgency (COIN) theorists often propose our troops should do and the actual capacity among our troops to implement those tasks.

2. What do Pentagon programs like these mean for the “smart power” ideas that are the threads of an emerging Obama doctrine on national security? The Obama administration’s top national security officials have all talked about the need to focus on investing in diplomacy and development as tools of national power – putting it under the label of smart power. And Afghanistan and Pakistan are probably the toughest test cases of this emerging Obama doctrine of smart power.

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The New York Times has a very good and interesting analysis of the way that post-6/12 internal politics are threatening to derail any nuclear deal between Iran and the P5+1, but I don’t think this is quite right:

Since he was first elected president four years ago, Mr. Ahmadinejad has been the face of confrontation. Now he is talking about cooperation with the international community while the so-called pragmatic conservatives have sharply attacked the nuclear agreement as a potential trick that would undermine Iran’s rights.

Iran’s reformers, stung by Mr. Ahmadinejad’s past criticism of them for suspending enrichment, have also criticized the deal. Led by Mir Hussein Moussavi, a former presidential candidate, they have been looking to take a page from Mr. Ahmadinejad’s own playbook, using the nuclear card to try to score political points.

“To have an opportunity to go at Ahmadinejad for not being nationalist enough, it looks like an opportunity for someone like Moussavi,” said Michael Axworthy, a former diplomat and an Iran expert who lectures at the University of Exeter in England.

As one of the members of Ayatollah Khomeini’s revolutionary inner circle, Mousavi’s nationalist credentials are not in question. That’s a big part of what enables him to maintain his opposition of Ahmadinejad, and by extension to Khamenei, and remain free and alive. It’s true that Mousavi has seized the chance to attack Ahmadinejad from the right on the nuclear question, but this is consistent with Mousavi message during the campaign — back in April, Mousavi was quoted as saying “No one in Iran will accept suspension” of enrichment. And given his own significant past role in Iran’s nuclear program, I think it’s wrong to characterize it as simple opportunism.

After the revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini had decided to abandon the Shah’s nuclear program — begun in the 1950′s under President Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace program– because Khomeini felt that going forward with the program would require too much of a dependence on Western assistance for components and expertise. Then-prime minister Mousavi and Hashemi Rafsanjani were key supporters of keeping the nuclear program going. The international community’s — and specifically U.S.’s — support for Saddam’s war against Iran gave a huge boost to their argument, convincing Ayatollah Khomeini that Iran should at least keep open the option of obtaining a strategic deterrent. Mousavi then gave the okay for the purchase of centrifuges on the black market.

All of this is to say that Mousavi has been a long-standing proponent of Iran’s right to enrich, a consensus issue among Iranians, and has as strong a claim as anyone to credit for Iran’s nuclear progress. What does this mean for the possibility of a deal between Iran and the P5+1? Nothing good, unfortunately. As was feared in the wake of the June 12 unrest, we now apparently have arrived at a situation in which neither Iran’s ruling clique nor the opposition can countenance the other being able to deliver rapprochement with the West. Apart from some sort of internal reconciliation, which does not seem to be in the cards, it’s unclear how we arrive at a deal that is both acceptable to the P5+1 and can survive Iranian politics.