There’s nothing quite like getting concern-trolled by both Andrew Sullivan and David Brooks on the same day. They are warning the Democrats that they’re in danger of throwing away an eminently winnable election in 2020 by moving far to the left of the American people, particularly on immigration policy.
My problem is that I’ve been very reluctantly coming to a similar conclusion. If I needed fresh evidence, I received it yesterday when Nancy Pelosi was forced to capitulate on the emergency border funding bill in the face of a revolt from centrists and “problem solvers” in her own caucus. The flood of asylum-seekers at the border is overwhelming our resources, and that would be true even under a humane president intent on doing their best to manage what amounts to a humanitarian crisis. The Democrats are rightfully focused on the deplorable response of the Trump administration, and there are excellent reasons for Congress to interject itself into the policy debate using the power of the purse as their leverage. The progressives are not wrong about this. Even on the politics, highlighting the brutal treatment and child abuse and endangerment can turn decent people against the Republicans.
But the policy response of the party leaders and presidential candidates seems deeply out of touch with the opinion of even most Democratic voters. Pollster Stanley Greenberg monitored the reaction of 210 Democrats during the two nights of debates, and here is what he found:
Unsurprisingly, the voters said their most important issues were health care and drug costs, by a wide margin. And that issue only became more important to them as the candidates spoke. Other topics that grew in importance over the course of the two nights: “getting immigration under control” and climate change. Climate change was also a singularly animating topic for unmarried women toward the end of the second debate.
The candidates didn’t actually spend a ton of time talking about “getting immigration under control.” They focused much more on the plight of would-be immigrants as they competed to offer the most generous welcome possible. This varied from offering free health care to undocumented workers to decriminalizing illegal entry to granting citizenship to everyone who makes it here and subsequently commits no crimes.
I don’t think this is how most Americans are viewing the crush of asylum-seekers at the border. I think they’re closer to Trump’s view that something ought to be done to dissuade them from showing up in such large numbers. For Sullivan, the main problem is the overly generous terms on which we’re willing to consider asylum cases which incentivizes people to show up and apply, and then skip out and stay if the ruling doesn’t go their way. He’s contemptuous of the idea that anyone who lives in a violence-prone country or is a victim of domestic violence should be presumptively qualified to become a U.S. citizen. Yet, he claims his main concern is that the backlash to these kinds of policies is a new form reactionary and fascistic politics which is on the rise in Europe and here in the United States. He supports a bill called the Northern Triangle and Border Stabilization Act that is currently circulating in Congress.
It proposes increased U.S. aid to Central American countries, to tackle the problem at its roots; a big investment in border facilities to ensure far more humane treatment of asylum seekers; a much stricter monitoring system to keep track of them after processing to make sure they turn up for their court hearings; many more immigration judges to reduce the massive backlog of cases; and it allows for asylum claims to be made in home countries, rather than at the border.
David Brooks goes into a less detail, but he also focuses on how left-wing parties have been losing elections over immigration issues.
Democrats are wandering into dangerous territory on immigration. They properly trumpet the glories immigrants bring to this country. But the candidates can’t let anybody get to the left of them on this issue. So now you’ve got a lot of candidates who sound operationally open borders. Progressive parties all over the world are getting decimated because they have fallen into this pattern.
As much I find their scolding tone annoying and insufferable, I can’t deny that they have some solid points on the politics. Voters want to hear not just how we’re going to treat people who arrive on our borders but how we’re going to get at the underlying problems that are causing the crush. They don’t think it’s a fake crisis, so a successful challenger to Trump needs to meet the American people where they are on this, and then perhaps they can show a humane path forward.
One thing this week showed is that the Republicans are much more united on this issue than the Democrats, and that should be a giant warning sign rather than something people just brush off or complain about. Immigration is what Trump will campaign on, and the Democrats cannot afford to lose that argument.
Martin, thank you for the link. That was an informative piece. Seems like a good rallying point for a progressive alternative to the wanton cruelty at the border.
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After watching both debates, I am now far more worried that I was that we will lose in 2020. Trump is going to characterize us as the party that will open the border and take away people’s private health insurance. As far as I can tell, this will be a correct characterization. If I were Brad Parscale, I would be happy as a clam right now.
If we nominated Manchin, they’d still characterize us that way.
Sure they would. But an attack is much more effective if it’s true.
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I haven’t watch any of the debates, but it seems to me that it’s a weak field of candidates. Even Hillary went too far on the immigration issue.
What this discussion neglects to mention is that the example country cited by these right wing racists is Denmark and the dynamics that allowed the left to win. Yes, the Social Democratic Party campaigned on far right immigration measures. However, they LOST votes. There is some analysis that shows by gaining 9% anti-immigrant vote that it allowed them to barely form their majority. But this doesn’t translate to the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party is the already formed coalition. We cannot copy them. Oh, and by the way, because their partners gained votes by being pro-immigrant, they demanded pro-immigrant measures to form a government:
Trump’s policies on immigration are not popular. We can argue for own vision. Don’t ignore the issue my any means. Hit it head on. People hate Trump’s methods and his anti-immigrant policies are tied to child separation. Argue for values. Make the patriotism argument. Tie to Trump selling us out to foreign oligarchs. But don’t tell me we need to listen to Andrew Sullivan, David Brooks, Rod Dreher, and David Frum’s racist ramblings.
So, once we win, do we enact what we promise, or do you advocate we take hard line stances and do the opposite in office?
I also think we need a solid plan. What you describe as Sullivan’s plan sounds like a good place to start. We do not live in a time that will allow open borders and we ought to acknowledge that, at least for the foreseeable future.
The point is well made. Our party needs to make several things clear to the general electorate. 1) We recognize that at this time in history there is a world wide migration crisis. The flow of asylum-seekers from Central America is not an attack on our country, but it is a large scale event that challenges us. We cannot afford to be perceived as putting our heads in the sand about this. Frame it as “migration” not “immigration”. 2) Make it clear that we are not for “open borders” (whatever that means…?) but that we need to direct resources to humane solutions that will radically increase our capacity to process the applications of these human beings in accordance with our laws. 3) Demonstrate an understanding of the larger forces that are driving the phenomenon and propose practical solutions that will help; specifically put together a team of smart, creative, savvy people to propose and implement better ways to handle the situation. 4) Ensure that paying for the measures we propose will cost less than whatever it would take to construct an impassible barrier, and that the funding will not put at risk the benefits that Americans currently enjoy. We lose if we are perceived as promoting the provision of benefits to asylum seeker ABOVE taking care of our own people.
The moral/ethical case is clear; we must not back away from that, but we also have a moral/ethical duty to all current Americans. We cannot give that up in the process of ending the ethical outrage that is current occurring at the southern border.
I’d have to disagree. The biggest threat to Democrats chances of winning in 2020 is far and away Republicans “not playing by the rules” aka- stealing the elections any way they can. With the justice department in the hands of a feckless Trump lackey and a Republican majority in the Supreme Court that is willing to act in an increasingly radical and partisan fashion (well, as long as chief justice Roberts retains some tiny fig leaf of non-partisanship), and of course a willing propaganda machine to bury the truth, the chances of Republicans attempting to subvert the election in quasi-legal (think Bush v Gore) or even a blatantly illegal fashion (stuffing the ballot box, fiddling with e-voting, martial law, etc…) and getting away with it are becoming distinctly non-zero. You know that there will probably be “foreign actors” intervening on the side of the administration, because no one will stop them, and the usual discriminatory voter roll purges, polling station closing and all of the other bad behavior that Republicans have become so good at. But I wouldn’t be surprised if they take it to the next level this time. Republicans are keenly aware that they need to keep the Senate at all costs and Trump knows that he most likely goes to jail if he doesn’t win, so the incentives to cheat are extremely high. The Republican party also understands it is a minority party, and to retain power they have to break the rules and they are perfectly fine with that because so far, it’s worked out pretty well for them. In for a dime, in for a dollar…
So then the Democrats biggest vulnerability is that they still think Trump is an aberration and that the norm-breaking, and lawlessness on the Republican side won’t continue to escalate I think it is partly a weakness of the Democrat’s broad coalition, which includes (by necessity) elements that would still be Republicans if it wasn’t for Trump and the rightward drift of the Republican party and who Democratic leadership seems overly sensitive to not alienating. But perhaps it is also a function of the inability of an aging leadership to deal with radical change and having a nostalgia for the way things used to be. Regardless, they seem to continually underestimate the depths that Republicans will sink to in order to win.
strongly argued, and proof why Uncle Joe’s vision of his “Responsible Repubs” is so deeply delusional.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that Dem failure to confront the immigration millstone is irrelevant. Put the two together and that gives Der Trumper and his minority their (anti-democratic) chance. “Stronger together” ain’t gonna cut it…
Agreed. McDonnell is a bigger threat to American Democracy than Trump.
Forgive me for being cynical but I received a DNC mailer the other day. They asked a bunch of push questions about which Trump issue pisses you off most. Some of them were relatively silly (about how he comports himself) and others were dead serious (compromising our electoral integrity, prostrating himself before our adversaries). What was missing from the questionnaire was anything about our abhorrent treatment of migrants at the border. The message to me was pretty plain, this is not going to be an issue the Democrats will be pushing next year. They are probably making the right political calculation, as Booman illustrates, but I still find it appalling. But to paraphrase Sinclair Lewis, “I love America, but I don’t like it.”
Sounds like we “need a plan for that”….
Brooks is too focused on the notion that “the Republicans have claimed a spot well right of moderate center, so it is up to the Democrats to be centrist,” which is a losing proposition. What won the last presidential election? Moderation? No. Being centrist? No. A willingness to blow off half the population, and take a position far from center? Yup. Clinton’s error, based on that evidence, was not saying “half of them are deplorables,” but rather failing to say “all of them are deplorables”, and NOT USING ALL CAPS to say it.
I am tired of the argument that the Democrats are not being responsible enough, so everyone has to vote for a reckless and careless Republican. It is not logically consistent, and it is not good political analysis.
The border crisis is partly due to a collapse of stable government in Central and South America, and partly due to the beginning of climate change impacts. It will get worse as climate change impacts ramp up. The Democrats just want to be decent and humane about the whole thing, and recognize that these people are human beings who are not worthless. Many of us would discover that if we were in their shoes, we would ourselves be headed for the USA, in hopes of finding a a chance to live a decent life. Americans have been decent before, so it is not beyond the pale to think that they might rise to the occasion again. It won’t be tidy or easy, but humanitarian crises never are.
Exactly. The idea seems to be (for both Sullivan and Brooks) that desperate Latinos are far more of a danger to the nation than an unqualified madman in the WH. That’s National Trumpalism at its core. As if ANY policies of ANY Dem wouldn’t be objectively superior.
It occurs to me well after having read this, that our biggest vulnerability as a society is how we handle the immigrant. There is a fundamental moral question to this issue that no amount of strategic political thinking should distract us from. I’ll be out holding signs with several others at the entrance to a park in our moderately conservative Oregon town tomorrow. I don’t care if that kind of action might hurt the Democratic Party brand or turn off people who voted Democratic for the first time. I know you get the moral aspect but I thought a comment on its centrality was warranted.