How does any if this hold up when in our current situation, there is an astounding level of ignorance over basic distinctions like those between illegal immigrants, asylum seekers, temporary protected status holders, visa holders, and even legal immigrants?
The majority of US citizens opining have no idea what they’re talking about on immigration, and don’t even know how to describe or evaluate any of the possible positions between maximal restriction and the pre-2025 status quo (which some of them unironically describe as “open borders”).
Well, not really sure what this is about. Early morning, looking for top-level summary stuff and wondering what "accommodation" means without following the links. (Is it just about implementing the kind of sensible immigration policy that any liberal country should have?) Guessing it's about election strategy or "what can win" rather than actual policy.
I think the Starmer speech didn't "work" for the simple reason that no one in the UK believes him. Further, he's astoundingly unpopular (particularly given that he had just won an election the year before) and his unpopularity comes in significant part because he is seen as both generally ineffectual and ineffectual on this particular issue. So it's not a very good test case - moderation on an issue (as in your Trump/abortion example) has to be credible (I don't think anyone ever believed Trump had a sincere pro-life position, just an instrumental one) and the people you are trying to motivate to support you have reason to support you on other issues, so removing a controversial one helps (Trump's federalist stance made it easier for some people who liked his message on other issues but were mildly pro-choice to vote for him). The people leaving Labour over immigration are also disgusted with Labour for either (a) not being further to the left (and so defect to Corbyn's "New Party") or (b) being generally incompetent in government (and so defect to anyone else) or (c) being as bad as the Tories on corrupt behavior, etc. (and so defect to Reform as a sitting Labour councillor did today). Labour is getting squeezed from both the populist left and populist right. Moderating won't help them overcome either the growing sense that they are incompetent or that they simply don't offer anything anyone wants compared to the other alternatives in the UK.
What I took from this is that Matt thinks politicians _should_ moderate toward currently popular positions on issues they currently hold polarized positions on, regardless of whether they hold these positions because they view them as 'correct on the merits', but then not tell anyone (Trump's "winning" strategy for moderating on abortion?) and hope that the electorate, but especially the heretofore unpolarized moderates all pick up on it? I mean, don't talk about things you don't think you can win on is a pretty conventional strategy for messaging, but this reads like a wack variant of that. Perhaps creating a real policy position that reflects the merits of the polarized views, then exhibiting some leadership around that, is a more sensible alternative? It might involve coherent moderation in some ways (making asylum more restrictive is probably the most obvious of these), but it can't be unspoken. I really don't think Dems are going to get away with being silently moderate on immigration at this juncture in history. They're going to have to offer a different vision that people like more.
Indeed, one could argue that Democrats tried this sort of 'moderate then sidle out-of-frame' maneuver on immigration during Trump 1 and Biden's political seasons, and the issue grew legs chased after them. It developed salience on its own, partly from events beyond direct political control, and couldn't be ignored or sidelined as more important than their 'favored' issues like healthcare, and now here we are.
Just spitballing here, but I wonder if part of immigration backlash is due to 1. where migrants are entering the country and 2. where they are sent after. Like thinking about when my ancestors came here fleeing pogroms, they would have seemed quite foreign, but Jewish immigration and settlement was concentrated in already large, very diverse urban areas. Coming over the southern border, the situation is quite different, there’s a push into formerly homogenous rural areas, mid-size towns, and (again once much more homogenous) major metros in border states.
Idk, South Texas was part of Mexico for years; that area has always been mostly Hispanic. I think it’s true that their systems got overwhelmed by migrants but I wouldn’t think it’d be much of a demographic change.
"Like thinking about when my ancestors came here fleeing pogroms, they would have seemed quite foreign, but Jewish immigration and settlement was concentrated in already large, very diverse urban areas"
People hated that too, that's why there was a 40 year immigration freeze until 1965.
"People hated that" AND/BUT it turned out to be one of the greatest things ever to happen to our country is the lesson everybody should be taking from that period.
The Democrats try to portray the Republicans as being against all immigration and the GOP wants to portray the Ds as being for open borders, but neither is the case, at least as far as those partisan voters polled believe.
But often the activist extremes dominate the discussion and peoples perception of the parties is the extreme view whether pro illegal immigration on the part of the Ds or against all immigration on the part of the Rs..
In the Red Rose research that Ezra Klein cited in his article, which should be required reading for all Democrats, on why Trump won, of all major issues, the biggest advantage for the GOP was on "border security" where voters favored the GOP over the Dems by a 60-40 vote, the highest of all issues (for relativity those polled favored the Dems on environment, abortion, healthcare). https://data.blueroseresearch.org/hubfs/2024%20Blue%20Rose%20Research%20Retrospective.pdf
Winning elections is half playing defense, and if you don't counter the public perception of your party, you buy it. By Kamala Harris' refusal to speak strongly on having a secure border, after having overseen a chaotic surge in asylum claimants flooding into US cities, she bought the perception that Dems do not care about illegal immigration (now the claim could be made that asylum is a legal process, but it is claimed after being arrested for illegal crossing).
Furthermore, the Biden administration stopped letting in asylum claimants in June 2024 with a remain in Mexico policy, which quickly ended the surge, so apparently they either recognized the political fallout, too late, or had a change of heart, but refused to note the prior policy was misguided so bought the public perception of favoring an open border.
Obama was often dinged by his left flank for allowing significant deportations, and in a very interesting speech where he was heckled by anti deportation protestors ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfAWJ3dMhrk) , he said that his duty was to enforce the law and though he favored immigration reform, that was up to Congress, and the executive could not rewrite laws or not enforce the law. The Dems might do well to campaign on the value and need for more legal immigration, but by supporting illegal immigration and refusing to enforce the law, sanctuary cities, they will continue to lose elections. Trump has gone so far as to turn off the voters with his level of cruel and aggressive deportations, but voters no more favor the Dems "what me worry" approach that illegal immigration is OK.
The activist extremes on immigration are running the government... once he dies we'll see what the Republicans actually believe, but for now what they're doing is trying to ethnically cleanse the United States (do note "trying", I am not making a statement as to what I expect their degree of success to be). The rest of it is immaterial; we'll find out where people stand once the dust settles.
Border control is security theater for a senselessly panicked electorate. Despite that fact, I recognize that politicians need majority coalitions to win elections so I'm willing to tolerate strong border rhetoric from the candidates.
But fuck the pundits. Politicians need to flatter the electorate to win elections. You don't. Stop prostrating yourself before the grand public of moronic incompetents out of excessive deference to the below-average. Stop cravenly both sidsing issues because you're too much of a sniveling coward to resist conservative crybullying.
When someone says "accommodation works" or "accommodation does not work" perhaps the first thing to ask is what does "accommodation" actually mean.
Does accommodation simply mean rhetorical code switching or does it mean implementing technocratic fixes to address the underlying problem?
To me accommodation is not about speeches at all. It means liberals using less draconian means for solving the underlying issue with minimal collateral damage.
I am sure that if Biden had actually shutdown the asylum program in 2021 (as he finally did in summer 2024) even if he rhetorically sang repeated paeans to America as a nation of immigrants, migration would have been a non-issue in 2024 and African American advocacy groups in blue cities would not have raised "last place aversion" alarms as migrants were seen as taking away scarce resources.
The 2024 red-wave in AOC's district was not because latino immigrants from 2 generations ago suddenly adopted "white supremacy thinking". It was because new migrants were undercutting their businesses by setting up illegal street vending. Biden's rhetoric or lack there-of had nothing to do with it.
I think Dems needed to moderate on asylum because that has been a drag on them but I don't understand the idea that they should cooperate with feds locally. Trump makes things like this impossible because his demands get increasingly outrageous
I’m generally ok with Seattle being a sanctuary city, except when serious crimes are committed. If an illegal immigrant gets in serious trouble with the law, blue cities absolutely should call ICE. Not for minor things like traffic court or stuff the court usually gets wrong like DV, but felony should be a one way ticket back to wherever
Agree that DJTs enforcement is both cruel and at times questionably legal, but the other policy, that predated Trump of sanctuary cities and not cooperating with immigration enforcement, is not justified. We are a country of laws, and though it might not be the responsibility of local governance to enforce immigration law, when they try to hinder enforcement that is not right.
Obama got a lot of flak for enforcing deportations, and his point was that he would try to get Congress to enact laws that might reduce that, but that as executive he could not just ignore the law. He wasn't rounding up people at shopping centers and sending them to South Sudan, but nor was he ignoring immigration enforcement or protecting illegal immigration. Here is his take when he was heckled by anti deportation activists https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfAWJ3dMhrk
It is triggering to me to read you say Trump moderated on abortion. No. He lies. With no sense of accountability to the actions that he will take.
So, sure, if your view of "moderation" is to simply not care about your actual intents on an issue and to only say what the audience wants to hear; he moderated.
By this token, he is moderating on political violence by just claiming that his side does none.
"It is triggering to me to read you say Trump moderated on abortion. No. He lies. With no sense of accountability to the actions that he will take."
Giving the pro-Lifers judges to overtun Roe does not make Trump a firebreathing pro-Lifer. He seems happy to leave it to the states now and not talk about it. An evangelical pro-Lifer would probably go for a Federal ban.
Nonsense. He knows it would be a losing thing to say. So he doesn't say it. He also knows it holds heavy sway over the evangelical voter base, so he won't come out against it, either. Will happily say the palatable words while also happily doing whatever he wants to do.
You can argue that he doesn't personally care that much. I don't even disagree. But, it is indisputable that he has taken more action than anyone in recent history to work towards a national ban.
Matt's definition of moderation is tautological. The moderate candidate is whomever the voters prefer, and the way a candidate becomes preferred by the voters is by moderating. That's useless. What does moderation actually mean in concrete terms? Well going by the attitudinal definition, moderate means "avoiding extremes of behavior or expression; calm, temperate demeanor" and that doesn't describe Trump at all.
I don't know if you are serious? He ran, in large part, with the promise that he would appoint people to the Supreme Court with the understanding that they would overturn Roe?
I can accept some legal arguments for why Roe was an awkward pinning of a right. I cannot accept any serious discussion from people saying that overturning it is not in a direct path to state and national bans. Feel free to try and argue in that direction. Maybe someone will take up the discussion with you.
The doctrine that allows Roe may be on shaky ground, but only good decisions came of it. Penumbras and emanations ftw. If the only way to get good policy is by shaky jurisprudence then we need to update our perspective on the jurisprudence.
Those are two different things. You can oppose Roe and still be against a national law or even against a state ban (my position). Yes, Trump is totally transactional and would supports anything that advantages him, like no taxes on tips, which would seem more befitting of Bernie Sanders, but the Dems could use a little of that transnationality, and stop supporting dumb things that voters dislike like opening the border to anybody claiming asylum (they ended that in 6/24 but only after they had already lost that public perception battle by creating chaos at the border) or being the party of homeless encampments and XY chromosome women athletes. What Trump understood and the Dems didn't was the need to play defense on those things that your party is unpopular on. Trump opposed the national abortion ban, made himself out to be the great defender of social security, and untaxed tips for waiters, while Harris never distanced herself from her administration which had under 40% approvals even before Biden's debate disaster. You see Newsome starting to defy Dem stereotypes, though I dont think somebody from CA can actually do that, Shapiro?, Fetterman? but if a Dem is to succeed they need to deal with their albatrosses- border, crime, affirmative action, gender 'affirming' treatment of minors.
I mean, you can claim that. But it is hard for me not to see the direct path from overturning Roe to state bans. With the path being laid for a national ban. To the point that I don't see it as an honestly held position. Everyone knew and said for years that overturning Roe would lead to state bans on abortion. To pretend otherwise is to basically willfully hold an ignorant position, at best.
This is furthered by the complete laugh out loud trouncing of state rights on every other issue. Literally trying to take over cities with the national guard, for f's sake.
So, sure, you can claim that he moderated by virtue of the fact that he doesn't actually care. But that isn't really against my claim, at all.
I am not a Constitutional scholar, but I do believe that the purpose of the SCOTUS is to determine what is allowed under our Constitution, not to decide things on their merit which is what Congress does or what a Constitutional amendment would do. Because I would favor a state allowing abortion does not mean that I think the Constitution forbids anti abortion laws as was held in Roe. I don't clearly see that, granted I have not done a deep legal dive or have that expertise.
Seems to me that this low-salience approach asks the pro-immigration public to trust the democratic party in a way they neither will nor should. It's always hard to tell what if anything a politician is actually doing, but there's a high prior on democratic politicians lining up behind a republican president one hundred percent while crying pure crocodile tears over those who get hurt and making deliberately impotent shows of symbolic resistance. At least the prior is high for those of us who came of political age during Bush II.
Clinton and Obama are the only two Democrats to be elected to two consecutive terms since FDR. That is, the only two who a) convinced the electorate to vote for them and then b) ran on the results of their first term and c) won.
I would argue that their presidencies were defined by accommodation. Clinton's whole pitch was basically "hey I might be a Democrat, but Reaganism has some good ideas about welfare reform, deregulation, etc." Obama famously tied himself into a pretzel to bring Republicans onboard for his healthcare reform that was based on a Republican plan enacted in Massachusetts; he nominated Garland to the Supreme Court in open acknowledgement of the fact that nominated a "liberal" would be unpopular; he stacked is cabinet with conservatives ostensibly in the name of centrism, but that is just accommodation by another name.
I'm not sure what to conclude from all of that except maybe that the result is the reality we are currently living through.
He said that the European experience is something that people advocating moving to the center on this issue "need to grapple with." Um, tough words there?
And: "The clear lesson of Biden's term is that a perception of border chaos hurts Democrats among all sorts of groups, Latinos included. That's really important.
"But border enforcement is not the same as mass deportation or lowering levels of *legal* immigration."
That strikes me as the sweet spot that maybe even Matt would agree with.
I buy the overall thesis, but I think we should be deeply skeptical of treating all of these political events as natural experiments. Politicians are not making these decision in a vacuum, unaware of their position.
If you are down (or going down) in the polls, then you try to shake things up, and then you lose - Does that mean you were wrong to shake things up or you didn't shake things up enough? Doing the right thing politically might be a bearish sign in the end.
Everyone engages in this kind of ad hoc reasoning. Yglesias contends that Harris "moderated" but didn't moderate enough, while Beutler contends that Democrats are "fighting" but aren't fighting back enough. Hard to say which is right from a 10,000 foot view, but at least both have preregistered these takes.
But now we are supposed to incorporate after-the-fact reasoning about foreign political dramas? Sorry but I just have no confidence that we will handle the evidentiary basis effectively. Better to lean on the fundamentals - median voter theory, salience, coalition-building - these are the mechanisms that actually carry Yglesias' argument.
I think everyone is giving too much credit to the literature in question or at least whatever Matt linked to. As far as I can tell it’s at best correlational and at worst just some theoretical hand waving. There isn’t event a whiff of a causal identification strategy. The journals, perhaps unsurprisingly, seem pretty low tier as well.
The thing is that issues are not binary. It’s not pro vs anti immigration. There is always going to be immigration in the US and there always has been, it’s the scope and scale that matters.
Whether intentional or not, Biden’s policies enabled a historic surge in immigration that was unpopular in scope and scale and he (and we) are paying the political price.
Compare that to Obama who took some important stands on immigration but kept the scope and scale of unauthorized immigrants to a level where it wasn’t the political disaster it was for Biden.
And what are the Bluesky liberals defending exactly? It’s one thing to oppose the harsh and potentially illegal tactics of Trump, it’s quite another to think that millions of immigrants deliberately gaming our system to come here is not a big deal.
Illegal immigration and the asylum end run that caused chaos at the border were the wind that filled Trump's sails. In Red Rose Research survey that Ezra Klein/David Shor used on their very important article about Why Trump Won, of all 50 or so issues rated on whether voters preferred the Rs or Ds, and how important that issue was, voters favored the Rs on "border security" 60-40%, their highest margin of any issue, and one also rated as very important.
And what you said is absolutely true of the public perception disaster of the border surge which Biden stopped abruptly in 6/24 with 'remain in Mexico'. So it made no sense to pretend that his prior unpopular stance made any sense if he stopped it, for likely political reasons.
"It’s not pro vs anti immigration. There is always going to be immigration in the US and there always has been, it’s the scope and scale that matters."
First, just to support the point on "salience." We have found a "salience" effect on Yelp (that is, not in an election context). Basically, when a city published restaurant hygiene scores, the reviews that mentioned hygiene became less racist but more reviews mentioned hygiene, which is the kind of review that tends to be more racist. (paper here https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/14614448221127674).
Second, what this shows is that Democrats need to find a way to address concerns about immigration while not making it salient. In other words, to have a message that implies "we're going to fix the immigration problem" but which makes immigration itself seem less central. Is this impossible? I don't think so. It's basic political messaging -- you pivot the problem to your strength. Here, I would focus on good governance and procedure. Yes, we have an immigration issue, but the problem is not the number of people, or that there is something wrong with immigrants. It's the disorder of the process. It's not just that some people are here illegally, it's also that people who try to come legally are waylaid for months in limbo etc. You can't fault people for trying to come to the greatest country in the world. But it behooves the greatest country in the world get its sh!t together.
PIVOT... that's the general problem in this country... housing abundance etc etc.
Of course, that will not please the progressive left, because they are anti-procedure. But that's also an easier way to fight them off. Like, I, personally, am for a humane immigration policy, just as they are. But I don't see how that can be accomplished without swift, clear procedures. "Being nice" is not a policy.
Except the number of people are actually the problem. If you took all of the people that came in during Biden's term and pushed them through a process that made them 100% legal, there were still just WAY too many people.
The nation simply doesn't want that many people that fast.
I'm not disputing or affirming that as a reality. I'm talking about the perception. Do a majority of voters think immigration is an issue only because of the raw number of immigrants? It's just the number, nothing else?
I am doubtful of that, because that position relies on most voters keeping assiduous track of the immigration numbers, which I don't think they do, and also having a fairly concrete model in their heads about the right rate of immigration in a country of 350 million people.
I think it's much more likely that people were persuaded by the chaos, indifference, and ineffectuality of Biden on this issue. If Texas is sending bus loads of immigrants to New York, who can't seem to deal with them, something is very broken. The quantity isn't really the issue.
Now, you may be right. It may be that for my goal to get an orderly system it may be necessary to reduce the total rate of immigration. But I think a lot of liberals would be ok with that if the process were more humane. So a message that prioritized treating people decently, which may require denying them entry into the country, would be a palatable pivot that enough liberals could get behind to keep it from being an electoral loser. That's obviously a conjecture, but was my point.
"Do a majority of voters think immigration is an issue only because of the raw number of immigrants? It's just the number, nothing else?"
I think it's the number and the culture. Obviously large numbers of immigrants from Australia or Canada would generate a lot less backlash. They already speak English, they have similar cultures and education attainment levels and would fit in easily.
Moreover, isn't the quantity the reason New York couldn't deal with the immigrants?
It was just too many people.
And even if the state had handled all that perfectly, too much cultural change too fast is a problem. If town of 10,000 people suddenly get's 1,000 new people that don't speak English, don't understand Americans customs it's going to be a problem.
Yes, I'll accept as a premise that voters don't want "too much cultural change too fast." And that this means, to your point, that the number they will tolerate varies with the cultural difference -- in language and other factors you mention -- of the immigrants arriving. So they would be more tolerant of a larger number from some countries rather than others.
But I'm saying that most voters derive their impression of whether there are "too many" immigrants based on the effects they see, not a set of quantitative models and counts. Rather, when they see the culture changing too fast, or immigration being disruptive, they infer that the quantity is too great. And in a sense that's true. If a process is poorly organized, it will be more quickly overwhelmed and look like there are "too many cases" to handle. But that is relative to its capacity.
For example, my understanding is that the waiting period to get asylum periods is very long, and that (until recently, so under Biden) people were let into the country to await their asylum hearing, and often that would last for months. During that time there is no incentive to integrate/assimilate. So a more efficient system could actually admit more people officially while admitting fewer people in a limbo state, and those people would be more inclined to assimilate.
"But I'm saying that most voters derive their impression of whether there are "too many" immigrants based on the effects they see, not a set of quantitative models and counts."
Agreed to this.
"my understanding is that the waiting period to get asylum periods is very long, and that (until recently, so under Biden) people were let into the country to await their asylum hearing, and often that would last for months. During that time there is no incentive to integrate/assimilate. So a more efficient system could actually admit more people officially while admitting fewer people in a limbo state, and those people would be more inclined to assimilate."
I don't think anyone waiting on asylum should be admitted at all. They should be held in detention until they get approved.
But at the same time we need to hire a LOT more immigration judges and get that wait time down from years to weeks.
I mostly agree, though if that town of 10,000 has the legacy infrastructure for 12,000 and most of those 1,000 have some form of employment, the benefits of a more solvent tax base outweigh the costs of cultural change. The people who don’t see that are sometimes willfully blind. They don’t have to love it, but it’s important to see the benefits of immigration, too.
How does any if this hold up when in our current situation, there is an astounding level of ignorance over basic distinctions like those between illegal immigrants, asylum seekers, temporary protected status holders, visa holders, and even legal immigrants?
The majority of US citizens opining have no idea what they’re talking about on immigration, and don’t even know how to describe or evaluate any of the possible positions between maximal restriction and the pre-2025 status quo (which some of them unironically describe as “open borders”).
Well, not really sure what this is about. Early morning, looking for top-level summary stuff and wondering what "accommodation" means without following the links. (Is it just about implementing the kind of sensible immigration policy that any liberal country should have?) Guessing it's about election strategy or "what can win" rather than actual policy.
I think the Starmer speech didn't "work" for the simple reason that no one in the UK believes him. Further, he's astoundingly unpopular (particularly given that he had just won an election the year before) and his unpopularity comes in significant part because he is seen as both generally ineffectual and ineffectual on this particular issue. So it's not a very good test case - moderation on an issue (as in your Trump/abortion example) has to be credible (I don't think anyone ever believed Trump had a sincere pro-life position, just an instrumental one) and the people you are trying to motivate to support you have reason to support you on other issues, so removing a controversial one helps (Trump's federalist stance made it easier for some people who liked his message on other issues but were mildly pro-choice to vote for him). The people leaving Labour over immigration are also disgusted with Labour for either (a) not being further to the left (and so defect to Corbyn's "New Party") or (b) being generally incompetent in government (and so defect to anyone else) or (c) being as bad as the Tories on corrupt behavior, etc. (and so defect to Reform as a sitting Labour councillor did today). Labour is getting squeezed from both the populist left and populist right. Moderating won't help them overcome either the growing sense that they are incompetent or that they simply don't offer anything anyone wants compared to the other alternatives in the UK.
What I took from this is that Matt thinks politicians _should_ moderate toward currently popular positions on issues they currently hold polarized positions on, regardless of whether they hold these positions because they view them as 'correct on the merits', but then not tell anyone (Trump's "winning" strategy for moderating on abortion?) and hope that the electorate, but especially the heretofore unpolarized moderates all pick up on it? I mean, don't talk about things you don't think you can win on is a pretty conventional strategy for messaging, but this reads like a wack variant of that. Perhaps creating a real policy position that reflects the merits of the polarized views, then exhibiting some leadership around that, is a more sensible alternative? It might involve coherent moderation in some ways (making asylum more restrictive is probably the most obvious of these), but it can't be unspoken. I really don't think Dems are going to get away with being silently moderate on immigration at this juncture in history. They're going to have to offer a different vision that people like more.
Indeed, one could argue that Democrats tried this sort of 'moderate then sidle out-of-frame' maneuver on immigration during Trump 1 and Biden's political seasons, and the issue grew legs chased after them. It developed salience on its own, partly from events beyond direct political control, and couldn't be ignored or sidelined as more important than their 'favored' issues like healthcare, and now here we are.
Just spitballing here, but I wonder if part of immigration backlash is due to 1. where migrants are entering the country and 2. where they are sent after. Like thinking about when my ancestors came here fleeing pogroms, they would have seemed quite foreign, but Jewish immigration and settlement was concentrated in already large, very diverse urban areas. Coming over the southern border, the situation is quite different, there’s a push into formerly homogenous rural areas, mid-size towns, and (again once much more homogenous) major metros in border states.
Idk, South Texas was part of Mexico for years; that area has always been mostly Hispanic. I think it’s true that their systems got overwhelmed by migrants but I wouldn’t think it’d be much of a demographic change.
"Like thinking about when my ancestors came here fleeing pogroms, they would have seemed quite foreign, but Jewish immigration and settlement was concentrated in already large, very diverse urban areas"
People hated that too, that's why there was a 40 year immigration freeze until 1965.
"People hated that" AND/BUT it turned out to be one of the greatest things ever to happen to our country is the lesson everybody should be taking from that period.
A recent RMG research poll showed that 74% of Americans view legal immigration as good and illegal immigration as bad for the US. Only 16% said all immigration, legal and illegal was good, and only 8% thought all immigration was bad. https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/article_95453e05-5dbd-4b97-8e66-cc99cfd0f9f6.html
The Democrats try to portray the Republicans as being against all immigration and the GOP wants to portray the Ds as being for open borders, but neither is the case, at least as far as those partisan voters polled believe.
But often the activist extremes dominate the discussion and peoples perception of the parties is the extreme view whether pro illegal immigration on the part of the Ds or against all immigration on the part of the Rs..
In the Red Rose research that Ezra Klein cited in his article, which should be required reading for all Democrats, on why Trump won, of all major issues, the biggest advantage for the GOP was on "border security" where voters favored the GOP over the Dems by a 60-40 vote, the highest of all issues (for relativity those polled favored the Dems on environment, abortion, healthcare). https://data.blueroseresearch.org/hubfs/2024%20Blue%20Rose%20Research%20Retrospective.pdf
Winning elections is half playing defense, and if you don't counter the public perception of your party, you buy it. By Kamala Harris' refusal to speak strongly on having a secure border, after having overseen a chaotic surge in asylum claimants flooding into US cities, she bought the perception that Dems do not care about illegal immigration (now the claim could be made that asylum is a legal process, but it is claimed after being arrested for illegal crossing).
Furthermore, the Biden administration stopped letting in asylum claimants in June 2024 with a remain in Mexico policy, which quickly ended the surge, so apparently they either recognized the political fallout, too late, or had a change of heart, but refused to note the prior policy was misguided so bought the public perception of favoring an open border.
Obama was often dinged by his left flank for allowing significant deportations, and in a very interesting speech where he was heckled by anti deportation protestors ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfAWJ3dMhrk) , he said that his duty was to enforce the law and though he favored immigration reform, that was up to Congress, and the executive could not rewrite laws or not enforce the law. The Dems might do well to campaign on the value and need for more legal immigration, but by supporting illegal immigration and refusing to enforce the law, sanctuary cities, they will continue to lose elections. Trump has gone so far as to turn off the voters with his level of cruel and aggressive deportations, but voters no more favor the Dems "what me worry" approach that illegal immigration is OK.
The activist extremes on immigration are running the government... once he dies we'll see what the Republicans actually believe, but for now what they're doing is trying to ethnically cleanse the United States (do note "trying", I am not making a statement as to what I expect their degree of success to be). The rest of it is immaterial; we'll find out where people stand once the dust settles.
Border control is security theater for a senselessly panicked electorate. Despite that fact, I recognize that politicians need majority coalitions to win elections so I'm willing to tolerate strong border rhetoric from the candidates.
But fuck the pundits. Politicians need to flatter the electorate to win elections. You don't. Stop prostrating yourself before the grand public of moronic incompetents out of excessive deference to the below-average. Stop cravenly both sidsing issues because you're too much of a sniveling coward to resist conservative crybullying.
When someone says "accommodation works" or "accommodation does not work" perhaps the first thing to ask is what does "accommodation" actually mean.
Does accommodation simply mean rhetorical code switching or does it mean implementing technocratic fixes to address the underlying problem?
To me accommodation is not about speeches at all. It means liberals using less draconian means for solving the underlying issue with minimal collateral damage.
I am sure that if Biden had actually shutdown the asylum program in 2021 (as he finally did in summer 2024) even if he rhetorically sang repeated paeans to America as a nation of immigrants, migration would have been a non-issue in 2024 and African American advocacy groups in blue cities would not have raised "last place aversion" alarms as migrants were seen as taking away scarce resources.
The 2024 red-wave in AOC's district was not because latino immigrants from 2 generations ago suddenly adopted "white supremacy thinking". It was because new migrants were undercutting their businesses by setting up illegal street vending. Biden's rhetoric or lack there-of had nothing to do with it.
I think Dems needed to moderate on asylum because that has been a drag on them but I don't understand the idea that they should cooperate with feds locally. Trump makes things like this impossible because his demands get increasingly outrageous
I’m generally ok with Seattle being a sanctuary city, except when serious crimes are committed. If an illegal immigrant gets in serious trouble with the law, blue cities absolutely should call ICE. Not for minor things like traffic court or stuff the court usually gets wrong like DV, but felony should be a one way ticket back to wherever
Agree that DJTs enforcement is both cruel and at times questionably legal, but the other policy, that predated Trump of sanctuary cities and not cooperating with immigration enforcement, is not justified. We are a country of laws, and though it might not be the responsibility of local governance to enforce immigration law, when they try to hinder enforcement that is not right.
Obama got a lot of flak for enforcing deportations, and his point was that he would try to get Congress to enact laws that might reduce that, but that as executive he could not just ignore the law. He wasn't rounding up people at shopping centers and sending them to South Sudan, but nor was he ignoring immigration enforcement or protecting illegal immigration. Here is his take when he was heckled by anti deportation activists https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfAWJ3dMhrk
Agreed. The core principle should be "don't inconvenience American citizens who can vote"
Biden inconvenienced US voters by creating asylum chaos.
Under Trump asylum chaos has turned into a different kind of ICE chaos that also ensnares American citizens on the margin.
Always fight against inconveniencing voters and don't spend any political capital on non-voters.
It is triggering to me to read you say Trump moderated on abortion. No. He lies. With no sense of accountability to the actions that he will take.
So, sure, if your view of "moderation" is to simply not care about your actual intents on an issue and to only say what the audience wants to hear; he moderated.
By this token, he is moderating on political violence by just claiming that his side does none.
"It is triggering to me to read you say Trump moderated on abortion. No. He lies. With no sense of accountability to the actions that he will take."
Giving the pro-Lifers judges to overtun Roe does not make Trump a firebreathing pro-Lifer. He seems happy to leave it to the states now and not talk about it. An evangelical pro-Lifer would probably go for a Federal ban.
Nonsense. He knows it would be a losing thing to say. So he doesn't say it. He also knows it holds heavy sway over the evangelical voter base, so he won't come out against it, either. Will happily say the palatable words while also happily doing whatever he wants to do.
You can argue that he doesn't personally care that much. I don't even disagree. But, it is indisputable that he has taken more action than anyone in recent history to work towards a national ban.
Matt's definition of moderation is tautological. The moderate candidate is whomever the voters prefer, and the way a candidate becomes preferred by the voters is by moderating. That's useless. What does moderation actually mean in concrete terms? Well going by the attitudinal definition, moderate means "avoiding extremes of behavior or expression; calm, temperate demeanor" and that doesn't describe Trump at all.
"What does moderation actually mean in concrete terms?"
One example is a Republican nominee running on opposition to a national abortion ban and entitlement cuts.
I don't recall Trump pushing for a national ban on abortion.
I don't know if you are serious? He ran, in large part, with the promise that he would appoint people to the Supreme Court with the understanding that they would overturn Roe?
Overturning Roe is not a national abortion ban.
Roe was a legal monstrosity that should have been overturned even if you support abortion (see liberal Yale Professor Akil Amar)
I can accept some legal arguments for why Roe was an awkward pinning of a right. I cannot accept any serious discussion from people saying that overturning it is not in a direct path to state and national bans. Feel free to try and argue in that direction. Maybe someone will take up the discussion with you.
The doctrine that allows Roe may be on shaky ground, but only good decisions came of it. Penumbras and emanations ftw. If the only way to get good policy is by shaky jurisprudence then we need to update our perspective on the jurisprudence.
We interpret the law based on the law, not on what people think are good decisions which people may differ on.
It's definitely allows states or the Feds to ban it. But it doesn't require them to.
And you can be in favor of one without being in favor of the other.
And I have seen zero interest in Trump pushing a national ban. Why because it would be hugely unpopular.
Those are two different things. You can oppose Roe and still be against a national law or even against a state ban (my position). Yes, Trump is totally transactional and would supports anything that advantages him, like no taxes on tips, which would seem more befitting of Bernie Sanders, but the Dems could use a little of that transnationality, and stop supporting dumb things that voters dislike like opening the border to anybody claiming asylum (they ended that in 6/24 but only after they had already lost that public perception battle by creating chaos at the border) or being the party of homeless encampments and XY chromosome women athletes. What Trump understood and the Dems didn't was the need to play defense on those things that your party is unpopular on. Trump opposed the national abortion ban, made himself out to be the great defender of social security, and untaxed tips for waiters, while Harris never distanced herself from her administration which had under 40% approvals even before Biden's debate disaster. You see Newsome starting to defy Dem stereotypes, though I dont think somebody from CA can actually do that, Shapiro?, Fetterman? but if a Dem is to succeed they need to deal with their albatrosses- border, crime, affirmative action, gender 'affirming' treatment of minors.
I mean, you can claim that. But it is hard for me not to see the direct path from overturning Roe to state bans. With the path being laid for a national ban. To the point that I don't see it as an honestly held position. Everyone knew and said for years that overturning Roe would lead to state bans on abortion. To pretend otherwise is to basically willfully hold an ignorant position, at best.
This is furthered by the complete laugh out loud trouncing of state rights on every other issue. Literally trying to take over cities with the national guard, for f's sake.
So, sure, you can claim that he moderated by virtue of the fact that he doesn't actually care. But that isn't really against my claim, at all.
I am not a Constitutional scholar, but I do believe that the purpose of the SCOTUS is to determine what is allowed under our Constitution, not to decide things on their merit which is what Congress does or what a Constitutional amendment would do. Because I would favor a state allowing abortion does not mean that I think the Constitution forbids anti abortion laws as was held in Roe. I don't clearly see that, granted I have not done a deep legal dive or have that expertise.
^ Person who votes for the guy actively stabbing him because he promised not to stab people.
This.
Seems to me that this low-salience approach asks the pro-immigration public to trust the democratic party in a way they neither will nor should. It's always hard to tell what if anything a politician is actually doing, but there's a high prior on democratic politicians lining up behind a republican president one hundred percent while crying pure crocodile tears over those who get hurt and making deliberately impotent shows of symbolic resistance. At least the prior is high for those of us who came of political age during Bush II.
"Seems to me that this low-salience approach asks the pro-immigration public to trust the democratic party in a way they neither will nor should."
THIS
it will take positive action to restore trust
Clinton and Obama are the only two Democrats to be elected to two consecutive terms since FDR. That is, the only two who a) convinced the electorate to vote for them and then b) ran on the results of their first term and c) won.
I would argue that their presidencies were defined by accommodation. Clinton's whole pitch was basically "hey I might be a Democrat, but Reaganism has some good ideas about welfare reform, deregulation, etc." Obama famously tied himself into a pretzel to bring Republicans onboard for his healthcare reform that was based on a Republican plan enacted in Massachusetts; he nominated Garland to the Supreme Court in open acknowledgement of the fact that nominated a "liberal" would be unpopular; he stacked is cabinet with conservatives ostensibly in the name of centrism, but that is just accommodation by another name.
I'm not sure what to conclude from all of that except maybe that the result is the reality we are currently living through.
Did Beauchamp "throw down the gauntlet"?
He said that the European experience is something that people advocating moving to the center on this issue "need to grapple with." Um, tough words there?
And: "The clear lesson of Biden's term is that a perception of border chaos hurts Democrats among all sorts of groups, Latinos included. That's really important.
"But border enforcement is not the same as mass deportation or lowering levels of *legal* immigration."
That strikes me as the sweet spot that maybe even Matt would agree with.
I buy the overall thesis, but I think we should be deeply skeptical of treating all of these political events as natural experiments. Politicians are not making these decision in a vacuum, unaware of their position.
If you are down (or going down) in the polls, then you try to shake things up, and then you lose - Does that mean you were wrong to shake things up or you didn't shake things up enough? Doing the right thing politically might be a bearish sign in the end.
Everyone engages in this kind of ad hoc reasoning. Yglesias contends that Harris "moderated" but didn't moderate enough, while Beutler contends that Democrats are "fighting" but aren't fighting back enough. Hard to say which is right from a 10,000 foot view, but at least both have preregistered these takes.
But now we are supposed to incorporate after-the-fact reasoning about foreign political dramas? Sorry but I just have no confidence that we will handle the evidentiary basis effectively. Better to lean on the fundamentals - median voter theory, salience, coalition-building - these are the mechanisms that actually carry Yglesias' argument.
I think everyone is giving too much credit to the literature in question or at least whatever Matt linked to. As far as I can tell it’s at best correlational and at worst just some theoretical hand waving. There isn’t event a whiff of a causal identification strategy. The journals, perhaps unsurprisingly, seem pretty low tier as well.
The thing is that issues are not binary. It’s not pro vs anti immigration. There is always going to be immigration in the US and there always has been, it’s the scope and scale that matters.
Whether intentional or not, Biden’s policies enabled a historic surge in immigration that was unpopular in scope and scale and he (and we) are paying the political price.
Compare that to Obama who took some important stands on immigration but kept the scope and scale of unauthorized immigrants to a level where it wasn’t the political disaster it was for Biden.
And what are the Bluesky liberals defending exactly? It’s one thing to oppose the harsh and potentially illegal tactics of Trump, it’s quite another to think that millions of immigrants deliberately gaming our system to come here is not a big deal.
Illegal immigration and the asylum end run that caused chaos at the border were the wind that filled Trump's sails. In Red Rose Research survey that Ezra Klein/David Shor used on their very important article about Why Trump Won, of all 50 or so issues rated on whether voters preferred the Rs or Ds, and how important that issue was, voters favored the Rs on "border security" 60-40%, their highest margin of any issue, and one also rated as very important.
And what you said is absolutely true of the public perception disaster of the border surge which Biden stopped abruptly in 6/24 with 'remain in Mexico'. So it made no sense to pretend that his prior unpopular stance made any sense if he stopped it, for likely political reasons.
Every Democratic politician ought to be forced to read the Red Rose analysis.
"It’s not pro vs anti immigration. There is always going to be immigration in the US and there always has been, it’s the scope and scale that matters."
this
First, just to support the point on "salience." We have found a "salience" effect on Yelp (that is, not in an election context). Basically, when a city published restaurant hygiene scores, the reviews that mentioned hygiene became less racist but more reviews mentioned hygiene, which is the kind of review that tends to be more racist. (paper here https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/14614448221127674).
Second, what this shows is that Democrats need to find a way to address concerns about immigration while not making it salient. In other words, to have a message that implies "we're going to fix the immigration problem" but which makes immigration itself seem less central. Is this impossible? I don't think so. It's basic political messaging -- you pivot the problem to your strength. Here, I would focus on good governance and procedure. Yes, we have an immigration issue, but the problem is not the number of people, or that there is something wrong with immigrants. It's the disorder of the process. It's not just that some people are here illegally, it's also that people who try to come legally are waylaid for months in limbo etc. You can't fault people for trying to come to the greatest country in the world. But it behooves the greatest country in the world get its sh!t together.
PIVOT... that's the general problem in this country... housing abundance etc etc.
Of course, that will not please the progressive left, because they are anti-procedure. But that's also an easier way to fight them off. Like, I, personally, am for a humane immigration policy, just as they are. But I don't see how that can be accomplished without swift, clear procedures. "Being nice" is not a policy.
Except the number of people are actually the problem. If you took all of the people that came in during Biden's term and pushed them through a process that made them 100% legal, there were still just WAY too many people.
The nation simply doesn't want that many people that fast.
I'm not disputing or affirming that as a reality. I'm talking about the perception. Do a majority of voters think immigration is an issue only because of the raw number of immigrants? It's just the number, nothing else?
I am doubtful of that, because that position relies on most voters keeping assiduous track of the immigration numbers, which I don't think they do, and also having a fairly concrete model in their heads about the right rate of immigration in a country of 350 million people.
I think it's much more likely that people were persuaded by the chaos, indifference, and ineffectuality of Biden on this issue. If Texas is sending bus loads of immigrants to New York, who can't seem to deal with them, something is very broken. The quantity isn't really the issue.
Now, you may be right. It may be that for my goal to get an orderly system it may be necessary to reduce the total rate of immigration. But I think a lot of liberals would be ok with that if the process were more humane. So a message that prioritized treating people decently, which may require denying them entry into the country, would be a palatable pivot that enough liberals could get behind to keep it from being an electoral loser. That's obviously a conjecture, but was my point.
"Do a majority of voters think immigration is an issue only because of the raw number of immigrants? It's just the number, nothing else?"
I think it's the number and the culture. Obviously large numbers of immigrants from Australia or Canada would generate a lot less backlash. They already speak English, they have similar cultures and education attainment levels and would fit in easily.
Moreover, isn't the quantity the reason New York couldn't deal with the immigrants?
It was just too many people.
And even if the state had handled all that perfectly, too much cultural change too fast is a problem. If town of 10,000 people suddenly get's 1,000 new people that don't speak English, don't understand Americans customs it's going to be a problem.
Yes, I'll accept as a premise that voters don't want "too much cultural change too fast." And that this means, to your point, that the number they will tolerate varies with the cultural difference -- in language and other factors you mention -- of the immigrants arriving. So they would be more tolerant of a larger number from some countries rather than others.
But I'm saying that most voters derive their impression of whether there are "too many" immigrants based on the effects they see, not a set of quantitative models and counts. Rather, when they see the culture changing too fast, or immigration being disruptive, they infer that the quantity is too great. And in a sense that's true. If a process is poorly organized, it will be more quickly overwhelmed and look like there are "too many cases" to handle. But that is relative to its capacity.
For example, my understanding is that the waiting period to get asylum periods is very long, and that (until recently, so under Biden) people were let into the country to await their asylum hearing, and often that would last for months. During that time there is no incentive to integrate/assimilate. So a more efficient system could actually admit more people officially while admitting fewer people in a limbo state, and those people would be more inclined to assimilate.
"But I'm saying that most voters derive their impression of whether there are "too many" immigrants based on the effects they see, not a set of quantitative models and counts."
Agreed to this.
"my understanding is that the waiting period to get asylum periods is very long, and that (until recently, so under Biden) people were let into the country to await their asylum hearing, and often that would last for months. During that time there is no incentive to integrate/assimilate. So a more efficient system could actually admit more people officially while admitting fewer people in a limbo state, and those people would be more inclined to assimilate."
I don't think anyone waiting on asylum should be admitted at all. They should be held in detention until they get approved.
But at the same time we need to hire a LOT more immigration judges and get that wait time down from years to weeks.
Yes, exactly.
I mostly agree, though if that town of 10,000 has the legacy infrastructure for 12,000 and most of those 1,000 have some form of employment, the benefits of a more solvent tax base outweigh the costs of cultural change. The people who don’t see that are sometimes willfully blind. They don’t have to love it, but it’s important to see the benefits of immigration, too.