The final British debate starts in less than an hour and all eyes will be on Gordon Brown, who suffered through one of the worst days in recent memory for any politician on the planet.  What's striking is how much Brown's comment - caught on mic calling a sixty-six year old lifetime Labour voter a "sort of bigoted woman" as his car sped away after an impromptu discussion involving immigration - is how much Brown's comment resembles then candidate Obama's "bitter cling" gaffe during the 2008 campaign.

You'll recall that Obama too was caught on tape in what he thought was a private conversation, pyschoanalyzing rural Pennsylvania voters before a well to do San Francisco fundraising audience. In both cases there's an unmistakable whiff of members of the left wing elite looking down with contempt upon the common citizen whom they hope to govern.

Another interesting parallel is that Brown's harsh judgment of Gillian Duffy came in response to her question about immigration, though the question wasn't bigoted in the least.  A few thousand miles away the reaction to Arizona's new immigration law from the left has been just as swift and severe. It's been likened to "terrorism of the innocent" (Jesse Jackson), "akin to apartheid" (Yvette Clark, David Zirin) and, of course, Nazi Germany (too numerous to cite).

That's not necessarily the response you'd expect to a law that takes its language straight from existing federal immigration statutes. As Byron York pointed out the other day:

"Since the 1940s, federal law has required non-citizens who are in the United States permanently to carry on their person, at all times, the official documents proving that they are here legally -- green card, work visa, etc. That has been the law for 70 years, and the new Arizona law does not change it."

But Arizona voters overwhelmingly approve of the action taken by the state legislature. This offends the sensibilities of progressives. Therefore it's not enough to debate the issue on the merits, the law and its supporters have to be demonized with over the top rhetoric and smears of racism.

This certainly doesn't help the political debate, and I would argue it doesn't really help progressives either since most people who aren't hardcore partisans find themselves in the middle, wanting to see immigration laws enforced  and the border secured, but done in a way that's even handed and compassionate towards folks who are here illegally.

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