Democrats are paralyzed by the progressive revolt against Donald Trump’s enforcement of the nation’s migration laws, says Mark Halperin, the well-regarded political reporter.
In a June 10 video about migration politics, Halperin said:
This issue of immigration, maybe more than anything else, brings out the worst in those who ironically have dedicated their lives to stopping Donald Trump.
The irony is they’re helping him. They are making his position on this so politically advantageous, and they’re making themselves the party of “Attacking law enforcement is fine If you think law enforcement is out of line.” That’s not a winning position. It’s not a popular position. It’s not a position that can be defended.
Multiple polls show that the public — including most legal immigrants– supports Trump’s crackdown on the civic and economic chaos caused by President Joe Biden’s reckless migration policy.
The polls leave LA Mayor Karen Bass and California Governor Gavin Newsom little recourse but to blame Trump for their endorsement of pro-migration “Sanctuary city” policies.
In the Washington Post, long-standing columnist David Ignatius echoed Halperin, writing, “Democrats have gotten the border issue so wrong, for so long, that it amounts to political malpractice.”
He continued:
Democrats’ mistake, over more than a decade, has been to behave as though border enforcement doesn’t matter. Pressured by immigrant rights activists, party leaders too often acted as if maintaining a well-controlled border was somehow morally wrong. Again and again, the short-term political interests of Democratic leaders in responding to a strong faction within the party won out over having a policy that could appeal to the country as a whole.
“The saddest part is that Democrats still have no clear policy,” Ignatius admitted.
Halperin said in his video:
This issue of immigration, maybe more than anything else, brings out the worst in those who ironically have dedicated their lives to stopping Donald Trump.
The irony is they’re helping him. They are making his position on this so politically advantageous, and they’re making themselves the party of “Attacking law enforcement is fine If you think law enforcement is out of line.” That’s not a winning position. It’s not a popular position. It’s not a position that can be defended.
I keep looking for Democrats who are on the right side here, but this goes back to what we’ve seen throughout Donald Trump’s 10 years on the national stage: Democrats cannot seem to think straight when he does something they don’t like — and they do not like his position on immigration.
I have seen people say, “Well, he really wants to have the military out there.” I actually don’t think he does. I might be wrong. Maybe this is his desired outcome. But the only reason that they [the federal government] moved here in terms of the chronology to put the National Guard in place, is because the local officials, through some combination of not wanting to help them and not being able to help them, weren’t defending them.
Imagine being an ICE official trying to do your job, figuring out who people are illegally who committed serious crimes, rounding rounding up them and others who are here illegally, and then having cars set on fire, scooters thrown from overpasses at you, [seeing them] besieging the Federal Building [at] the detention center. This is not the way we should treat our law enforcement officials. This is not the kind of support we should give them. So imagine you’re in California, and the LAPD is saying, “Well, there’s no violence.” The mayor is saying, “Well, Trump is inflaming this.”
These are very emotional issues. Part of the reason [immigration is] such a tough public policy issue is these are very tough issues, very difficult challenges, because there’s so many cross-cuts, there’s health care and law enforcement and the humanity of it.
Interestingly, Halperin downplays the economic aspect of migration, even though the federal economic policy of importing millions of poor, hard-working migrants has impoverished millions of ordinary American voters.
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