The irony of this year's election campaign is that poor people -- both immigrant and native-born -- would have been far better off had it never taken place. As both parties joined forces to pass the two most far-reaching anti-poor bills in 50 years, the poor have already emerged as this year's campaign losers. PNS associate editor David Bacon writes on labor and immigration.

Forget gender gap politics. The stunning fact about this year's election campaign is that both Republicans and Democrats have joined forces in making war on the poor. That's the reason why both the welfare bill and the immigration bill -- the two most far reaching anti-poor proposals in half a century -- are now law, with barely a ripple of protest from either party.

Campaign seasons used to be famous for producing deadlocks in Washington as Democrats scrambled to fend off Republican efforts to help the rich and Republicans fought off Democratic efforts to help the poor. Now those days are gone. And it's not the Republicans who have changed -- it's the Democrats.

While launching rhetorical broadsides at Senator Dole and congressional Republicans, the real message of President Clinton and his campaign is that there are no political differences between him and his Republican rival -- other than age, health and style. Each is out to prove he can be just as tough on immigrants, minorities and poor people as his rival.

Agreement on the poor robbed both parties' conventions of political debate. After all, what's to argue? Instead, the high-priced corporate lobbyists got a chance to rub shoulders with those in power, or those who would replace them.

Today both candidates move smoothly from one lavish fund raiser to the next. In Silicon Valley, the president picked up half a million dollars in a single dinner from high tech corporate contributors who make the creation of an anti-union environment a matter of principle. He lavishes these executives with praise for their technological innovation.

Clinton's criticism is reserved for those who can't attend or contribute. Young people in minority communities become gang members whose activities must be controlled through curfew laws. Mothers and children who need public assistance in small portions, rather than the massive corporate subsidies and tax breaks enjoyed by Clinton's dinner companions, are depicted as a social problem. Clinton lectures them in a voice he would never use with an equal, dwelling on their need to reform themselves out of poverty.

For both parties, being poor has become a personal defect. Why not simply agree to a process for cutting off benefits, rather than a messy debate over trying to end poverty?

A similar consensus was reached on poor immigrants, the ideal scapegoat for voters fearful of losing their jobs or angry over paychecks that no longer pay the bills. "These people work every day," as the Rev. Jesse Jackson says, as seamstresses in sweatshops, room cleaners in hotels, strawberry pickers and low-wage factory workers. But today, thanks to the immigration laws, few will be able to afford to petition for the husbands, wives or children left behind in their homelands. They will have to choose between permanent separation from their families or return to grinding poverty in their homeland.

Meanwhile, anyone with a million dollars to spend in America can buy a visa at the embassy tomorrow morning for themselves and their families.

This year immigration raids have become commonplace again in Latino communities -- after all, the administration needs high profile street sweeps to show it's serious about immigration. Who gets picked up? Men looking for a day's work on a street corner. A farm worker picking vegetables. Even children in poor neighborhoods who have lost any immunity as they play or walk home from school.

As the new law doubles the size of the Border Patrol, barrio sweeps will become everyday events. Under the transparent rubric of a "pilot program," work documents will also be required, paving the way for a national work ID Card. Undocumented workers will continue to drive to work in their beat-up cars, but the law will now prohibit them from having drivers' licenses.

Far from using the campaign to resist the war on the poor, Democrats in Congress are riding it for all its worth. Those who take solace in the hope that a new, Democratic majority will undo the draconian measures in both welfare and immigration reform should consider the fact that more House Republicans (24) voted against it than House Democrats (13). It was the backing of a Democratic senator, California's Diane Feinstein, that gave the immigration bill political legitimacy for other Senate Democrats.

Five weeks before the election, it's already clear who the real losers in this year's presidential campaign are: the poor. They would have been far better off had the campaign never taken place.