Believe it or not, some people want to know my opinion on things. Some of those things have to do with politics. For months now I've been telling people that Spitzer is not reaching out to the people he needs the most : The activists and advocated who pounded the pavement for him election.

Elizabeth Benjamin published yesterday an article that describes the sentiments of not only Democrats in Albany but everybody I know in the progressive grassroots.

In Clue us in, Democrats growl at Eliot Spitzer [1], Elizabeth gets on the record what people have been saying on the off since the Troopergate scandal broke off : Eliot has a serious communication problem with his base and this is not a problem we can just lay on his staff.

Here's the gold :

"He didn't consult us before, he didn't consult us now," said state Sen. Ruben Diaz (D-Bronx). "He let me go on the Senate floor and make a fool of myself. Now I have to take the time to stand up, eat crap and apologize. Eat my pride."

Some Spitzer allies saw the driver's license debacle as
yet more proof of his disdain for the Legislature and lack of understanding of the ways of Albany. "All in all, this really didn't move the governor forward," said one labor leader who endorsed Spitzer last year. "I just hope they'll be able to start to get things right. ... There's not a lot more political capital left."

Here's the proof of the pudding in the progressive NY blogosphere : We didn't know either.

I've been working covering at culturekitchen immigration issues but I am also one of the few latino bloggers in the United States who has been activitely working to bring together immigration activists and organizations, as far back as 2005. Had the Spitzer camp done it's due diligence, they would have found an ally here.

But they didn't.

And now we have this [2] :

So, on Saturday, Mr. Spitzer left the field. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and he hastily announced a new plan, a revised three-tiered licensing system for New York’s drivers. Not all the details are available, but it looks like bad government policy and
a bureaucratic nightmare in the making. Unwieldy and probably unworkable, it manages to offend a whole segment of pro-immigration New Yorkers, some of the few political friends Mr. Spitzer has left.

As outlined, the new agreement between New York and Washington would create three licenses. One would comply with the still-undecided federal standards for the Real ID Act, and another would be for those who want to go to Canada without using a passport. The third license would not be valid as identification to board airplanes or enter
federal buildings.

It is license No. 3 — the cheapest and easiest to get — that would be offered to all New York residents, including the undocumented. The Spitzer people say that they would not share information about the immigration status of any of these third-tier drivers. But as immigrant advocates have already pointed out, who else would really want this license except those who cannotqualify for anything else? As other states have learned, a separate but unequal license for immigrants does not work. Undocumented workers
would not come out of the shadows to apply for a driving permit that they believe would make them a target for any official on a crusade against illegal immigrants.

And as the New York Times article points out, the new plan is an obvious path to the dangerous national Real ID. So Spitzer is basically planting dangerously the seed to have all New York State residents monitored through RFID technology.

What would it have taken for his advisors to consult with immigration, privacy and communications experts who are anyway waiting for their call?

He deserves the smackdowns he's getting. This is proof Spitzer and his camp have no understanding of the difference between fame and political capital.

He's still famous. He just doesn't have any political capital left.

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