Trump says Democrats want open borders and rampant crime.
Democrats don't have a message, but they have inside their heads a metaphor: America the Lifeboat.
The first rule of campaigns and messaging: decide who you are before your opponent decides who you are. Democrats let Trump define them.
Democrats think they are winning. They are still envisioning a Blue Wave. They are complaining about families being separated, that Trump's plan for immediate return of migrants is unconstitutional, and that they have recordings of crying babies that "broke every heart in America," as Rachel Maddow put it. Plus there is Paul Manifort in jail and Michael Cohen who might flip, and Harley Davidson moving jobs to Europe.
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| Sent back, to become holocaust victims. |
Democrats look at those signs and think they have Trump on the run. No.
Democrats are drawn deeper into an immigration policy of no enforcement. If America is a lifeboat then all boundaries are cruel. Any rule that blocks anyone except a violent criminal is unacceptable.
Trump's dog-whistle racism and has pushed Democrats to see boundaries as a matter of race. Democrats have an idea in mind, America the lifeboat, haven for the world.. Be trusting and non-prejudiced and welcoming. It is a duty. They have in mind the guilt of US refusal of entry of Jews fleeing Hitler, the St. Louis in 1939.
It is, in fact, cruel to stop people from coming to America to better their lives economically or to escape violence at home. Democrats are uncomfortable being cruel. Trump likes it.
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| Trump's brand: tough on illegal immigration. |
Fear trumps compassion.
Here is a test for readers:
Please post a comment with a concise, statement of a Democratic position that will deal with the issue of incoming immigrants.I don't think it can be done. There isn't one. Democrats only know what they don't like. Any policy that blocks people at the border appears racist and cruel to them.
Democrats will eventually come up with something. It will be a complicated and nuanced message, because the situation is complicated and nuanced. No, we don't actually want open borders. No, we don't actually tolerate crime. It will be hard to change the minds of voters because they will already have a clear simple message in their minds.
Trump got there first.
Trump got there first.
3 comments:
Hillary Clinton said she was against illegal imigration but welcomed legal immigrants.
Welcome legal immigrants! Democratic motto it should be.
OK, I'll take the reader test.
I think the concise positions of Democrats on "incoming immigrants" are:
(1) We heartily welcome legal immigrants to make America a less boring country dominated by chain restaurants and mono-chromatic culture. We are not willing to reduce the legal immigrant flow which has been the lifeblood of this country since we killed the first Native Americans. In particular, we are not willing to end family migration. We have seen our children and grandchildren delight in their multi-cultural school friendships, the Willows and the Marias, the Johns and the Amals all marching through life together. We are not going to diminish the innocence of our many-colored children any more than we already have as a country.
(2)On illegal immigration, we favor enforcing the laws only if they can be enforced humanely and effectively. If vigorously enforcing the laws turns border detention into a cesspool of human rights violations (like our racist, crime-infested, overcrowded prison system) then vigorously enforcing border law must yield to our higher legal duty of honoring the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights to which we are a signatory nation.
(3) We don't have the policy answers to the decades old border problems. We don't know exactly how to solve them. But we do know what we absolutely are unwilling to do-- to mistreat people for whom we have no greater rights to a dignified life than they do. If our humanity can only be preserved at the cost of political loss, then so be it. We'll do what we can, as we can in the meantime, to show the world that America is not lost to her values. Not yet.
We are [rather than a lifeboat] the Mother Ship, the Enterprise even, staffing with aliens let alone Syrians and Haitians, Nigerians and Guatemalans. Exploration in all fields of human endeavor, new renaissance humanism, not a Christian caliphate, a best practices paradigm for social solutions together with the very high priority of keeping the ship in good working order to navigate the reaches of space.
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