So as blue America stumbles its way into an oppositional position, one interesting fight on the horizon is over “sanctuary cities”.

Now obviously that’s relevant to the first-order concern of what effective immigration regime we’ll end up with, and if I wanted to talk historical parallels I’d reference deprecated notions of state (as vs. federal) citizenship, and northern resistance to slavecatchers.

That’s not that important though. What piques my interest is the rumbles are that Team Red will try to undercut sanctuaries not by law and lawsuit but by conditioning federal grants to cities and their agencies on cooperation. (Such “greenmail” using federal highway money was how Congress, under influence of the necrophile lobby MADD, pressured states to standardize and tighten alcohol regulations.)

That’s an important distinction. I think a legal strategy would further reinforce the Democratic coalition, lending it purpose and urgency. The elites doing the legal and ideological lifting would have a chance to relegitimate themselves to their base, make a show of resisting in the courts, maybe even win. Maybe lose with political coalition intact and satisfied they did all they could. (Realistically, maybe drag the case out until a friendly administration can come in and throw it.)

On the other hand, under a greenmail strategy every blue city, and every blue political actor therein, could face a PICK 2 OF (save the DREAMers/don’t raise taxes a bunch/don’t cut budgets a bunch) choice, a golden apple thrown into the Democrats’ high/low urban coalition of comfortable professionals, social service beneficiaries, and marginal identities.

Beyond that, if this infrastructure package I hear about comes with similar conditions that’s some leverage. California’s trying to build a high speed rail backbone and a new Delta water project and even the official estimates have them at eleven digits each, the question is what’re your principles valued at?

Keep an eye on that.