Action. Reaction. Secondary reaction.
Democrats responded to Trump's racist opening campaign statement.
They should have responded to the need for better immigration enforcement.
Hindsight is 20-20.
Trump held a rally in Aurora, Colorado. A top policy and strategy aide, Stephen Miller, was a warm-up speaker:Stephen Miller: "Look at all of these photos around me. Are these the kids you grew up with? Are these the neighbors you were raised with?”
Aurora Colorado crowd: "NO!"
Miller: “Are these the neighbors that you want in your city? No, these are the criminal migrants that Kamala Harris brought into your community. And as swiftly as they came, Donald Trump will send -- them -- back."
This morning, on MSNBC of all places, I saw a Trump ad. It said that Kamala Harris intentionally brought illegal immigrants into the country to spread drugs and to rape and murder Americans.
How did we come to this? Here is the oscillation of events:
1. Trump came down the escalator and said immigrants from Mexico were "not their best." They were criminals. Rapists. Drug-carriers.
2. Democrats responded to the racism in the statement. Maybe this was bait by a mastermind strategist. Maybe it was just Trump expressing the everyday xenophobia that I heard everywhere in Boston during the busing era of the 1970s. People of Irish ethnicity disliked people of Italian ethnicity, and vice versa. Both groups respected but disliked Jews, who moved to the suburbs to get away. All Whites disrespected and feared Blacks. People had their own neighborhoods.
By defining Trump's comments on immigration as racism rather than the operational failure of a government-run immigration system, Democrats went into careless oppositional mode. They condemned Trump's efforts to control the border. They scoffed at a wall. They called deportation cruel. They called for abolition of ICE, the border enforcement agency. And when Biden was in office they allowed flagrant gaming of the asylum system. The result was an even more chaotic border. Democrats figured that if Trump said it, it had to be wrong because it was inevitably racist.
3. That created the present backlash against Democrats' blindness to an operational problem. Harris is scrambling to catch up, but the political damage was done. Democrats looked insensitive to a problem Trump now defines as a combination of weakness, wokeness, or a cynical effort to admit people who will vote Democratic in gratitude for all the welfare Democrats will give them.
The oscillation of action and reaction is accelerating, with Miller, JD Vance, Trump, and others talking about foreigners cutting your throat in your kitchens.
Democrats were accurate when they noted and condemned Trump's blunt dog-whistle racism. From the first month of this blog, back in the summer of 2015, 3,860 posts ago, I noted that Trump connected with audiences on fear and dislike of the ethnic and cultural "other." On Sept 18, 2015 I watched from the audience Trump's speech in Rochester, New Hampshire, the one where the questioner asked if Obama was a Muslim.
The only insight I would add is that there is a good reason why Trump may not have perceived the question as one he needed to address McCain-style. It is that the raucous crowd did not give any hints of being surprised or offended by the question. No one shouted “idiot” or “sit down,” and no one booed or hissed. The general crowd noise, audible in the tape, stayed the same. Donald Trump is very attuned to the crowd, engaging it constantly.
But Democrats were wrong to treat the issue solely as one of deplorable racism. There was, in fact, an operational problem that impacted American security, American labor, and American laws. Democrats are the party that asserts that government can solve problems. When it fails to do it a demagogue can take an issue and run with it, taking it to a higher, cruder level.
Back in 2015 I could see hints of Trump's future success. Trump wasn't just a clownish playboy celebrity with a schtick. He was connecting with people in a way that Hillary Clinton did not. He was appealing to the ethnic tribalism I saw in Boston, and he was making it work to his advantage.
9 comments:
Trump’s xenophobia, misogyny and criminality may be connecting with people, but that makes it no less deplorable. The GOP has made fear, anger and hatred its stock-in-trade and become dominated by its lunatic fringe, who believe God intended for the U.S. to be a White, “Christian” theocracy.
Of course, we need secure borders and rational immigration policies. But more importantly, we need to address the issues that are driving worldwide mass migration. One of the biggest factors is climate change, but it isn’t even mentioned in the Republican platform. Their solution to all our problems is simple(minded): drill, baby, drill.
By the way, Steve Miller is a musician. Stephen Miller is Trump’s Joseph Goebbels.
Think Maslow‘s hierarchy. When people are under a threat of some sort, high minded idealism will not appeal to them.
Once the border state governors came up with the brilliant political strategy of shipping the flood of migrants to blue cities, the blue cities all of a sudden changed their idealistic tune.
It’s amazing to see what limousine liberals do when something starts happening to the limousine.
There is one good reason (out of many) to reject trump on November 5, - Stephen Miller!
Michael, “high-minded idealism” may not appeal to the majority of voters, but virtue is never subject to the whims of public opinion. Loving your neighbor is not a political position, and caring for “the least of these” may cost an election. But that’s the price of living a principled life.
There are far more conservatives being driven around in limos these days than liberals. Most conspicuous, of course, is their cult leader Trump – when he’s not using his personal 747.
The college educated cultural elites are driving around in limousines (and lifestyles) that are way out of reach of the working class “deplorables” that they have such overweening contempt for.
Michael Trigoboff, "shipping" immigrants to so-called "blue cities" was not brilliant. It used innocent people as pawns in a political stunt to get media attention. In many instances the people didn't know where they were going, and the people in the cities didn't know they were coming. What would be brilliant is to actually solve the immigration problem by working together, like the proposal put forth that Trump put a stop to for political gains. There are way too many lawmakers more interested in causing problems than solving them because they get more attention that way.
It isn't the working class I have contempt for. I was part of the working class. What deplorable is that Republicans of whatever class would put a traitorous criminal in our nation's highest office. That they could imagine he has anything but contempt for them would be hilarious if it wasn't so pathetic.
RE: "shipping" immigrants to so-called "blue cities" was not brilliant.
Yes, a stunt, but...
Look at all those cities that proclaimed "we are a sanctuary city" implying that migrants and illegals would be welcome in their city. Easy to say, but actually no plan in place to do anything. Worse, when those migrants were shipped to those sanctuary cities, there was an unplanned cost to those cities, the taxpayers, and the businesses.
In the past, immigration laws were implemented to control the flow of immigrants into the country - for work, for residency, for many other reasons, and there was a slow, controlled process to allow that legal immigration.
Unfortunately, the borders were not well controlled.
Each administration has had to deal with out of control, illegal immigration.
Just recall what the current administration did on day 1 of their term of office - Trump's executive order to require migrants to stay in Mexico until their asylum request was processed was terminated by the Biden administration. No effective measures were put in place to address the resulting crisis.
VP Harris continues to focus on the bill that she claims would have help resolve the crisis, claiming that Trump killed the bill.
If I recall correctly, Trump has not been in office the last 4 years, so he had no authority to do anything. That bill may have been bipartisan, but don't forget, there were both Democrats and Republicans who opposed that bill. Prior to that bill, the Biden administration did have a Democratic majority in the House and the Senate, but were unable to come up with any compromise, bipartisan agreement for legislation that could have helped to resolve the border crisis.
Talk is cheap. Both sides of the issue are guilty of avoiding the issue with implementable solutions.
Post a Comment