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Washington, DC - infoZine - Scripps Howard Foundation Wire - Kamarck and co-author Alexander Podkul coded 1,662 hopefuls for House seats, including incumbents, and analyzed the candidates based on their demographic information, their political faction and their positions on issues. The analysis of races spanned every state and excluded only candidates who didnt have to file with the Federal Elections Committee, third-party candidates and those who withdrew.

Presidential primaries have frequently been studied, but congressional primaries have been, until now, the ignored stepchild of the American political system, Kamarck said, adding that the key to understanding politics is knowing the factions at play.

This was a primary election about health care, Kamarck said. This issue remains every bit as polarized as it was at this time last year.

Democratic hopefuls took nuanced approaches to the issue. Most candidates on the left supported the law, about a quarter took what Kamarck called a mend it dont end it approach and about 37 percent didnt bring it up at all.

It was practically a prerequisite to pledge to fight it to the death, said political columnist Jill Lawrence of Republican candidates take on Obamacare. Lawrence and another political journalist, Walter Shapiro, did a second study looking at campaign narratives from dozens of competitive races across the country for the Brookings primaries project.

It almost seemed like they were sitting there with a thesaurus trying to find the worst word they could think of to describe it, Lawrence said.

Immigration reform was another boilerplate issue during the primaries, and most candidates took a position on it.

Republican candidates were more likely to have nuanced opinions of immigration, with 11 percent taking complicated positions, which according to the study means they may have supported a path to citizenship but opposed amnesty for undocumented workers.

About 43 percent of Republicans, almost uniformly tea partyers, opposed reform or argued exclusively for securing the border. Notably, the study said the majority of Republicans who won spots on the general-election ballot were opposed to immigration reform.

About half of the Democrats who ran for House seats supported comprehensive immigration reform outright and less than 1 percent were opposed. About 3 percent of Democrats had a complicated position. Forty-six percent of Democrats had no discernable position.

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2014 Primary Elections: They Were All About Obamacare and Immigration

Remember immigration reform? It was the biggest domestic policy topic for the past couple of years. Brief recap of major events: the Senate passed a bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform bill, the House pretended to consider taking it up for a while, and then it didnt, President Obama promised to take executive action to slow down deportations, and then he didnt. If you add up those two didnts, the sum total of legislative and executive action thats changed U.S. immigration policy in the past two years is zero. The result of immigration activists tireless work has been zero. Zeroes across the board.

Poor decisions have been made on this path to this overwhelming zeroness. The poorest and most predictablewas Speaker John Boehner stringing everyone along for a year about how his House might take up immigration reform, before deciding not to. The border crisis (remember that?) offered Boehner the final excuse to drop his plans, but even before that, there was a lot of pathetic muttering about how Obama couldnt be trusted to carry out the law because hes a tyrannical president. His excuses dont matter, really. The GOP has officially decided to be an anti-immigration party for the indefinite future, and President Obama should no longer feel concerned about poisoning the well on the legislative front by taking executive action.

Another poor decision was President Obamas. He promised to take executive action by the end of the summer, and then broke that promise in order to appease some crappy Democratic Senate candidates in red and purple states. Moreover, in breaking that promised, he offered a new pledge to take executive action on deportations after the midterms. This had the twin negative affects of depressing a key part of the Democratic base while leaving Republicans room to scream about his eventual plans.

The Washington Post reports today about how Obamas decision to delay may be hurting Democrats more than its helping. The most obvious way to determine this is to look at polls of Senate battleground races, where the Democrats are faring worse by the day. But heres some ground-level reporting, for the hell of it.

Activists in key states say it is increasingly difficult to register would-be Latino voters who would vote for Democrats because of unhappiness over the decision. Poll numbers for Obama and Democrats have also dropped farther among Hispanics than the population at large. One group has even launched a campaign against four Democratic senators who backed a GOP proposal to bar Obama from taking any executive action on immigration.

The president has not helped us, said activist Leo Murietta, 28, who is working to register Latino voters in Colorado forMi Familia Vota. People are disappointed. They wanted action, they wanted activity, they wanted movement.

President Obama, sensing that he cant take immigration activists for granted, will be speaking at a Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute gala tonight. Buzzfeed reports that he will reaffirm his promise of administrative actions to slow record deportations before the end of the year, although thats hardly set in stone. The White House has pushed back against a Buzzfeeds reporting that Obama will call on [Latinos in attendance] to stick with him and wait 40 more days.

Theres another slim but horrifying prospect, as Voxs Dara Lind writes. That Obama could fall for Boehners trap again. Boehner, as Lind notes, has been saying in recent interviews that theres absolutely a chance that the House could take up immigration reform next year but only if Obama reneges on executive action. Obama, of course, would prefer a legislative solution to immigration problems over an executive one, and so it will be tempting to once again delay action in order to give Congress more space to work things out on its own.

Youre laughing, right? You should be laughing. Hopefully President Obama isnt falling for it again. Were too far along in this administration for this sort of thing. The Republican House and (likely) Republican Senate are not going to pass bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform with anything resembling legal status for undocumented immigrants next year, and any murmuring about the possibility of that is simply John Boehner trying to manipulate the Democrats into not pursuing whats in its interest. Whats in the Democratic partys interest is to secure a key and growing part of its base Hispanics with results, however it can, over and over, until Republicans are forced to accept its demographic disadvantage and come to the table for a legislative deal.

That wont happen in the Obama presidency. His legacy will never include bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform. His legacy could, however, include serious executive action that lifts the threat of deportation for millions of families. It would be the proper and humane policy, and it would put more heat on the Republican party, eventually, to reinvent itself.

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Boehner springs another lame trap: Why Obama must ignore his latest overtures about immigration

President Obama will seek to reassure Latino elected officials and activists that hes committed to taking executive actions on immigration during a speech Thursdaynight to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute.

The remarks will be the president's first public address on immigration since his decision last month to put off any action until after the midterm elections.

Obamas decision disappointed Hispanic lawmakers and other activists pushing the White House to change deportation policies. Rep. Luis Gutirrez (D-Ill.) accused Obama of walking away from our values and our principles during an interview last month with ABC News.

Obama made the decision with an eye on November, hoping it would boost his partys chances of keeping its Senate majority. But it appears to have contributed to his falling approval ratings, particularly with base Democratic voters.

Its also stoked new fears among pro-immigration reform activists that the president might never take the type of sweeping steps they've been fighting for.

The administration has scrambled to calm those fears over the past few weeks, with top administration officials repeatedly insisting the president will act before the end of the year.

Vice President Biden hosted a Hispanic Heritage Month reception at his home late last month, and said at the event that Obama was absolutely committed to moving forward. Biden added that the president would move ahead with or without Congress and that if they don't get something done by the end of this year, the president's going to do it.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest told Telemundo last weekend that Obama would make good on his promise to implement executive actions to address problems with the immigration system by the end of the year.

This is a promise the president will keep, Earnest said.

The president has tasked his team with looking at the law and determining what kind of executive authority he can use to try to address the problems of our broken immigration system, he said. They've come up with some good solutions. They will be finalized before the end of the year and the president will announce them before the end of the year.

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Obama to reassure Hispanics

Immigration Reform - Advice for illegals

By: Marijan Cvjeticanin

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Immigration Reform - Advice for illegals - Video

Less than a month after President Obama announced he would delay using his executive authority to reform immigration laws, there is evidence that the decision is doing exactly what he hoped to avoid: hurting Democrats.

Activists in key states say it is increasingly difficult to register would-be Latino voters who would vote for Democrats because of unhappiness over the decision. Poll numbers for Obama and Democrats have also dropped farther among Hispanics than the population at large. One group has even launched a campaign against four Democratic senators who backed a GOP proposal to bar Obama from taking any executive action on immigration.

The president has not helped us, said activist Leo Murietta, 28, who is working to register Latino voters in Colorado for Mi Familia Vota. People are disappointed. They wanted action, they wanted activity, they wanted movement.

With so many congressional and gubernatorial candidates locked in close races this year, Democrats cant afford signs of complacency or sagging support. But Murietta and others believe that only action not promises of action will help spur increased turnout among Hispanics with just five weeks until Election Day.

Obama is scheduled to speak Thursday night at a gala hosted by the Congressional Hispanic Caucus his first appearance in front of the group in three years. The address is expected to include a mention of his commitment to immigration reform and a vow to fix as much of our immigration system as he can on his own, according to a senior administration official familiar with his plans.

But outside the gala, dozens of protesters plan to picket Obama and the lawmakers who invited him, alleging a brutal betrayal of Latinos, according to organizers. And inside the room, Obama will be among the lawmakers most upset by his decision to wait.

We would not wait until after November if it was an issue affecting the gay and lesbian community, Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez (D-Ill.), a critic of Obamas work on immigration, said at the conference Wednesday afternoon. If this was about womens reproductive rights, if this was about the minimum wage, if this was about a series of other issues, the Democratic Party would come together.

Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Tex.) said hes found widespread frustration. A lot of people understand theres a political calculation, but those same people understand theres a lot of people suffering because he didn't act, he said in an interview.

Labor Secretary Tom Perez, who is under consideration as Obamas next attorney general, sought to reassure conference attendees Wednesday. But his message fell flat.

The question of executive action, my friends, is a when? question, Perez said. Immigration, he added later, is all about his values and his leadership. And thats why I love working for this president.

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Growing evidence that Obamas decision to wait on immigration is hurting Democrats