La promesa de Obama

The White House's latest strategy is to hold meetings as a way to explain the tortured process through which the administration tinkers with immigration policy while remaining unable to pass anything substantive.

The discussions track with one of Obama's 2012 re-election campaign goals: connect with a key voter bloc that may sway the outcome of November's election. 

And one of the issues being addressed at the meetings is what's been commonly referred to in the Latino community as la promesa de Obama - Obama's unfulfilled promise to Hispanics to pass comprehensive immigration reform. 

"Every conversation we've had around immigration lasts over four hours," said Jose Rico, executive director of the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanics, who was part of the Evergreen session Saturday. Voters understand Obama's position better, Rico said, "when we spend the time with community leaders, explaining to them the process the president has taken."

This doesn't sound too inspirational. But it's what I argued would happen. The Republican debates have helped.

But Republican candidates may have so alienated Latino voters with their harsh rhetoric against illegal immigration during GOP debates that Obama's best weapon "may be the mouths of the Republican candidates," said Gary Segura, a professor of political science at Stanford University. 

Even Obama himself appeared to acknowledge that during a meeting with Latino journalists last month. "We may just run clips of the Republican debates verbatim. We won't even comment on them," he told them. "We'll just run those in a loop on Univision and Telemundo, and people can make up their own minds."

Obama's main strategy for immigration is simply to convince supporters that he is trying but Republicans are blocking, just enough to prevent them from staying home rather than voting.