There is a real immigration challenge in the United States right now. For a variety of reasons, from climate change to authoritarian leaders coming to power, many people usually leave their home countries and want to live here. And even left-leaning pro-immigration cities and states like Chicago and Massachusetts are seeking federal help as they struggle to provide adequate housing and other support for these new immigrants.
But if the entire country were as liberal as Boston or Chicago, I doubt Biden would use words like “close the border.” Perhaps he will emphasize the economic benefits of increased immigration and the U.S.’s history of accepting refugees from repressive countries, calling for a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants and other pro-immigration policies. right. Rather, his approach has been one-sided, primarily locating immigration and migration as the problem, and the solution being to increase border patrol agents and limit asylum and other routes into the United States.
It is a framework and policy aimed at appeasing white voters in states like Wisconsin ahead of the 2024 election, and includes the best possible reforms to the U.S. immigration system and comprehensive It is not intended to be a comprehensive explanation.
I am deeply concerned about former President Donald Trump, and I would be less opposed to some conservative policies and rhetoric if I was convinced that it would likely prevent the Republican presidential nominee from winning. But these trade-offs need to be made wisely. Bad policies need to be justified by actual electoral benefits. And I have little faith in Biden or other centrist Democrats to make such an assessment. Their track record on this front is pretty poor.
In the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s, Democrats included then-Sen. Biden has focused on deficit reduction, tough-on-crime rhetoric and the Iraq war, while distancing himself from broader government policies, labor unions and abortion rights. This reflected the sincere centrism of some party leaders, but was also partly done for electoral reasons.
If Bill Clinton had lost the 1992 and 1996 elections, the United States would undoubtedly have adopted even more conservative policies. But while Republicans have won many victories at the presidential and congressional levels over the past three decades, Democrats have legitimized and, at times, expanded the death penalty, the unnecessary war in Iraq, and many other flawed policies. Supported the enactment. The conventional wisdom in the 1990s and early 2000s was that the Democratic Party wisely moved to the center during this period. Much of that centrism may not have been electorally necessary, as the Democratic Party currently performs fairly well electorally as a pro-worker, pro-abortion rights, pro-Black party.
Biden has moved on from these flawed policies, but he has not moved away from the instincts that drove them. The rightward shift in immigration and police in the 2020s is similar to the rightward shift in spending and crime in the 1990s. The president is attacking calls to defund the police. He urged cities to spend American Rescue Plan money on already bloated policy departments. And Washington, D.C., was forced to back away from reforms that would ease criminal justice penalties. In the 1990s, the Democratic Party distanced itself from Jesse Jackson, pretending to be centrist. For Democrats in the Biden era, usually unknown progressives and activists play the same role.
And again, the evidence justifying this strategy from an electoral perspective is weak. Biden’s approval ratings are dismal. Popular Democratic governors, such as Kentucky’s Andy Beshear and Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer, don’t always take the most left-wing positions, but they are more likely to be right on policy than the progressive wing of the party. , you rarely hear them distance themselves from people who are almost always right. We will do everything in our power to ensure that the Democratic candidate is elected.
And Republicans have done about as well as Democrats in elections, and Republican leaders aren’t lecturing anti-abortion activists for pushing unpopular positions.
Centrist Democrats tend to make decisions based on public opinion polls. If you ask pollsters, Americans approve of Biden’s more centrist rhetoric and policy proposals on immigration, police and other issues, just as they did on government spending and crime in the 1990s. It is true that I agree. But issue polls don’t correlate well with the polls that actually matter: support for or likelihood of voting for a particular candidate. There is little evidence that there is a group of floating voters who take fairly centrist positions on 19 issues and vote for the candidate closest to his views on more than 10 of them.
Currently, politicians who almost always take majority positions (Biden) are tied or trailing in polls with their opponents (Trump) who always take very unpopular positions.
Biden defeated Trump in 2020 and could defeat Trump again this year. But “look at the polls and do what’s popular” isn’t some kind of political cheat code. The benefits are often small and sometimes non-existent. It’s hard to debate whether taking the right position on immigration would work for Biden, since there hasn’t been similar movement on other issues.
And again, this performance-centrism has real and serious costs. The movement for police reform is becoming harder to sustain as Democratic leaders join Republicans in attacking the words of activists and praising police officers. It becomes more difficult to reject the unwarranted stereotype that the Democratic Party is a party of overeducated elitists who are far removed from the average person. .
On immigration, left-wing parties in Europe that adopt more xenophobic rhetoric and policies often further sway public sentiment against immigration, but this does not help these parties perform well in elections. It’s happening in America too. It’s no surprise that Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R) is actively defying the Biden administration and trying to block federal agents from entering border parks. Because Biden seems to be downplaying this issue and therefore he doesn’t want to be nominated for president. Too pro-immigration.
What Biden needs to do is look for ways to make the immigration system more effective without exalting or legitimizing anti-immigrant sentiment. So he has no problem hiring more Border Patrol agents or imposing new restrictions on asylum. But repeating Trump’s rhetoric that out-of-control borders must be “closed” (which is essentially impossible anyway) is unlikely to win over many voters. will make the public debate in the United States more anti-immigrant. .
I could be wrong. Biden will probably win the election, and there is conclusive evidence that his right stance on immigration has won the hearts of many Americans. But the worst possible outcome would be for Mr. Trump to be elected, and Mr. Biden was proposing a slightly more moderate version of the same policies, making it very conservative on immigration and other issues for the press and for Democrats. It’s becoming harder to fault Republicans for taking action. The second negative outcome is that although Biden won, he moved further to the right on issue after issue, reversing much of the Democratic Party’s post-Black Lives Matter gains.
Winning the presidential election may require some degree of centrism. But we need a lot of progressivism to achieve a more just and just country. So Mr. Biden should pay close attention to the progressivism he is touting to win in November.