Just a week ago, the Washington Post ran a lengthy piece on President Obama’s sometimes strained relationship with LGBT and immigration reform activists, a story that featured numerous accounts of Obama’s pushback against activist demands for action:

“The president grew visibly frustrated as each successive advocate spoke. He said that … he sympathized with their concerns but that he did not have the legal authority to stop deportations.”

That was in March of 2010, more than two years ago. And of course he had the power then that he has today. But this afternoon he will step forward and announce a dramatic revision to immigration enforcement policy that DREAM Act supporters have been pushing for since his election. So what changed?

One change is that the DREAM Act itself died. It passed the House and Senate late in 2010, and again in 2011, but was killed by a Republican filibuster both times. By the end of 2011 it was clear that past GOP supporters of the bill weren’t going to budge anytime soon. It’s understandable that Obama didn’t want to muddy the DREAM Act waters with unilateral action while the bill still stood a chance of passage. It’s been clear for more than a year that the DREAM Act wasn’t happening, though, and Obama hasn’t acted.

Today’s current shift likely has two sources.

First, there’s the upcoming election. The DREAM Act is broadly popular with the American people, and particularly so with youth and Latinos. As I noted on Twitter earlier today, “stop being a douchebag” can be an effective re-election tactic. And because this policy is unlikely to be extended by a Romney administration, this isn’t just a rhetorical gesture or a policy pivot — it raises the stakes in November.

There’s another angle on the timing of the announcement too, though. For the last week, DREAM-eligible young people have been staging occupations at Obama campaign offices, first in Colorado and then in Michigan and California. Because the demonstrators were themselves undocumented immigrants, an administration decision to remove and arrest them would have subjected them to possible deportation, making the decision of how to handle the protests a delicate one. With today’s announcement, that decision goes away, as does the possibility that the occupations could spread to more politically problematic states — Florida, say, or Arizona, or the campaign’s national headquarters in Illinois.

What we’ve seen today, in other words, is new proof that you shouldn’t listen when an elected official tells you his hands are tied, as well as evidence of the power of electoral organizing combined with creative direct action.

As I write this, it’s an hour and a half until the voting booths close in Wisconsin for the Walker recall. This week’s polling shows the margin closing, and Twitter rumor says that turnout has been through the roof, but I tend to suspect that what we thought was going to happen last month is going to happen tonight: Walker will win in another squeaker.

He outspent Barrett seven-to-one, after all, and had an even bigger margin in soft money. There are a lot of Republicans in Wisconsin. Not enough to win the state for the presidency, usually, but enough — for instance — to send Russ Feingold packing.

It’s not a deep blue state. The polls have mostly showed Walker up 3-5 points, and polls don’t usually lie. So I think the good guys are going to lose this one. I hope I’m wrong, but that’s what I think.

And here’s what I want to tell you if I’m not wrong: Folks are going to say this is a disaster for progressives, and for unions, and for grass-roots Dems, and for politically engaged students.

To hell with them.

The weird alchemy of electoral politics and horserace reporting says that 50.01 is more meritorious than 49.99 (and — even weirder, that 23.45 is more meritorious than 23.42). It’s not. It’s just the side that wins, that’s all. It’s just the side that the rules of the game say gets to go live in the big house and wield the big stick.

And not to say that the game is rigged, but the game is rigged. One side likes it when people don’t vote, and organizes to make that happen. One side likes it when people get turned away from the polling place, and legislates to make that happen. One side thinks that if rich people shovel money at you, you should be able to throw money at the voters with impunity, in secret, in volume.

And that’s bullshit.

I was thinking tonight at dinner about what it would be like to be a Republican and to wake up on election day excited if it was raining. To wake up excited because people who’d planned to vote wouldn’t make it to the polls. To wake up happy that old people wouldn’t chance a slip-and-fall with one hand on the umbrella and another unsteady hand on the cane. And what I thought was that that would suck. That it would suck to be that person. That it would suck to be a Republican, because — if you were serious about winning elections, serious about wanting to come out on top — you’d have to find the prospect of lots of people voting a drag.

I don’t know that I’m a Democrat, but I know that I’m not a Republican. And one thing that means is that I like people, and I like voting, and I like people voting. I like it when rich people vote, and I like it when middle-class people vote, but I particularly like it when poor people vote. I particularly like it when homeless people vote. I particularly like it when couch-surfing students vote. I especially like it when fifty-seven-year-old first-time voters with no birth certificates vote, and I like that my soupy sappy snuggly attachment to all those people voting isn’t undercut by panic about who they might be voting for.

Because I trust them. I trust their votes.

And so maybe Scott Walker is going to win tonight. Maybe the Koch brothers and #tcot and the big money and the union busters and the grammatically-challenged bigots are going to pop the cork in an hour and sixteen minutes. Maybe that’s going to happen.

But if it does happen, they have to wake up tomorrow morning and be them, and we get to wake up tomorrow morning and be us. And we get to start working on the next beautiful project, whatever the hell that is.

And I’d rather be us losing than them winning, any day of the week.

Via Twitter, a lovely 1964 antidote to the week’s Diamond Jubilee gushfest.

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Quebec Students Heckle The Queen

QUEBEC CITY (UPI) — Queen Elizabeth was booed by student hecklers Saturday as she began her controversial two-day visit to this bastion of French Canada.

The booing was heard at least twice as the royal motorcade pulled up in front of the Provincial Legislature. It was the first real incident of the royal visit.

Some 50 policemen — part of the most extensive security force in Canadian history — moved in swiftly to disperse the hecklers. Some minor scuffling took place, but police succeeded in herding the demonstrators away from the main entrance to the Legislature.

Four or five of the hecklers, including Reggie Chartrand, a former Montreal boxer and well-known separatist leader, were taken into custody by members of the special riot squad.

The Queen’s first moments on French Canadian soil — at historic Wolfes Cove where British troops rowed ashore at night two centuries ago to win this province and country from France — were graphic evidence of the mammoth security measures taken to ensure her safety.

The traditional arrival routine — 21-gun salute, royal salute and honor guard inspection, took place inside a shed closed completely to the public and cut off.

On these bluffs, soldiers with rifles kept up a steady patrol. A fair number of of mounted police were inside the shed itself and soldiers lined the route from it almost on a shoulder-to-shoulder basis.

About 4,000 soldiers and police were on duty here in advance of the queen’s arrival. As added security precautions Navy frogmen conducted an underwater search of the cold, murky St. Lawrence where the royal yacht was to berth.

Poot: “Man, every year, everybody’s like, ‘Yeah, these kids out here, they’re a new breed! I ain’t never seen anything like this before! This the end of the world now!'”

Carver: “Look around you, fuckhead. This seem like the dawn of a new day to you?”

Poot: “Can I go now, or you want to slap me up some more first?”

If the voters of Wisconsin throw governor Scott Walker out of office in Tuesday’s recall election, it will be in large part the work of the state’s activist students, who have been organizing against Walker since the day he took office in 2011. For Walker, this is merely the latest chapter in a fight that goes back to before most of today’s undergrads were born.

Scott Walker’s career in electoral politics goes back to the spring of 1988, when he ran for the student body presidency of Marquette University. A 20-year-old sophomore, Walker initially won qualified praise from the campus newspaper, but its editorial board reversed itself after seeing what they called a “pouty” pamphlet put out by his campaign.

In the pamphlet, Walker described opponent John Quigley as a campus radical who was “constantly shout[ing] about fighting the administration” and threatening it with “silly” lawsuits. “Student protests and sit-ins,” he wrote, “are poor substitutes for effective leadership.”

That campaign was also clouded by accusations of campaign violations, including an incident in which Walker campaign staffers stole bulk copies of the campus paper’s endorsement issue.

Walker went on to lose that election by a 57-43 margin. He left Marquette two years later without graduating.