Peril for Democrats

Trump is driving the Democrats crazy.

He provokes them, using words like "infest" to describe immigrants.

In their effort to avoid sounding like Trump Democrats have abandoned policies that would serve their own values and their own political interests.

Fact: There are 44 million immigrants in America representing 13.7% of the population--a level that is nearly as high as the levels of the early 20th Century migration from Europe.  Click. Now 25% of all American children have at least one foreign born parent. Click: child stats

Click: Youtube Washington Post

Fact: The primary source of immigrants in the past 30 years have been from Latin America and Asia. Click: Pew

Fact: During periods of high immigration America has routinely experienced political expressions of nativism and resistance,  Public unease with immigration should not be a surprise to Democrats. 

In 2006 border security was a bipartisan issue. Senators Barrack Obama, Chuck Schumer, and Dianne Feinstein were comfortable supporting better fences to "stem the tide of illegal immigration." President Bill Clinton had spoken strongly about the need to protect the border and distinguished between legal and illegal immigration.

Something happened. Trump made talk of immigration control toxic for Democrats, so their message migrated. Trump's language made them recoil .They became uncomfortable distinguishing between legal and illegal immigration, or about border security, lest they sound anything like Trump.

Trump: "pour into and infest"

Trump's nastiness serves his purpose. Some of his base loves it, but more important, Democrats hate it. His base loves provoking Democrats. If it makes Nancy Pelosi mad, then it must be good.

Trump pushed Democrats into a politically untenable position.  Andrew Sullivan wrote about this this week--with advice for Democrats to let Trump have his stupid wall: Click: Andrew Sullivan at NY Magazine   I agree with Andrew Sullivan and with the Guest Post by Thad Guyer.

[Note: I personally am pro-immigration. I consider it a powerful social force. But like any good medicine, care needs to be used with dosing, timing, and on how the medicine is absorbed.]

Guest Post by Thad Guyer:

"The Other Issues? Illegal Immigration is the Only Issue"

The NPR program The Takeaway on June 22, 2018 boldly tries to put it in Democrats' faces that if we don't do a serious course correction on illegal immigration then we risk remaining out of national power. Listen, "The Political Price of Betting on Immigration", The Takeaway, Click: podcast, the Takeaway

Hillary Clinton lost on the illegal immigration issue. But she didn't just lose, she lost to a theretofore unthinkable candidate. How could any credible Democrat lose to Trump? Illegal immigration, that's how. And that may be the dark political reality in this year's midterms and in 2020. Illegal immigration is now the only issue in American politics. In German politics. In Italian politics. In British politics. Border insecurity is the issue that will determine whether the European Union survives in its present form. Illegal immigration will determine who controls the U.S. Supreme Court for the next several decades. 

What are Democrats doing about this dark reality? Too little too late. We are happy in our Robert De Niro "f _ _ _ Trump" bubble. We get standing ovations-- from ourselves. Illegal immigration single-handedly derailed our birthright to the "new Democratic majority". Latinos were supposed to deliver that to us. They didn't and they aren't, according to The Takeaway's analysis. Worse, the panel cites empirical data that "white liberals" are giving only "soft" support on immigration issues. The more white liberals are exposed to images of border chaos, the more they become anti-illegal immigrant. 

Trump is hyper-confident in this political reality. He's now told the GOP Congress to not "waste time" with immigration reform. He has the media and the country where he wants them-- obsessed with what's happening at the border. Sure, put the crying kids front and center. But in the background many voters are seeing huddled dark skinned people, obviously poor and uneducated, telling the cameras they are fleeing "gang violence", rape and murder. The media agrees with Trump that they have also brought gang violence-- MS-13. Everyone agrees large parts of Mexico and central America are hell-holes. Liberal whites ask "and the gangs, rapists and murders, what, they just stayed behind, they aren't embedded with these people on the camera?" 

"We don't want it here" is irrefutable emotion and politics.  

The Takeaway discusses immigration from history and political strategies to Trump's current "zero tolerance". The separated children actually never were at the center of the debate-- border security has been. The political reality is that little girl on the Time cover didn't displace fear of immigrants, she displaced the political mojo of Dreamers. The political theater isn't that she's pleading with Trump, she's demanding exception from border law, and tax dollars. And Latino voters, who are closest to the immigrant waves, they aren't rallying to throw open the borders like immigration activists are demanding. Nor are black voters. Nor Asians. And, the data shows liberal whites are getting queezy with what, on camera, looks like "an invasion". 

The show ends with a prescription: Democratic leaders need to start addressing border security. But the conclusion is that probably won't happen because those leaders are afraid in doing so they will further fracture the frayed Democratic base. It is shaping up that we are losing to Trumpism all over again. We need that course correction.