Issue Intensity
A friend reminded me of an old aphorism. Paraphrased, it reads something like "Democracy tracks what people care about, it doesn’t track how much they care about each thing." In other words, the intensity of feeling about individual issues isn't well measured at the ballot box. While there are exceptions - we've seen how gun control backfired on the Dems in 1994 and how abortion motivated Dem voters in 2022 - it can be hard to determine how people prioritize things in a basket of policies, especially given the pitfalls of confirmation bias.
It's not hard to conclude that Biden and company took their win over Trump as either a blessing of a far-left agenda or a rubber-stamp assent as to anything they felt like doing. An incorrect conclusion on their part, from where I'm sitting, but their behavior tells the tale.
Where they went most wrong is on immigration. Trump singled himself out of a pack of seventeen declared aspirants for the GOP presidential nomination in 2016 by thumping the immigration drum, loud and hard. That was his insight, his moment of "aha," and he rode it all the way to the White House.
The Democrats, fully immersed in Trump Derangement Syndrome even before he got elected, allowed their emotions to drive them into a reflexive contrarianism, opposing his efforts and going even further once back in power by throwing the southern border open to anyone who felt like sashaying across. I've speculated as to deeper reasons for this, and I'm sure the cynical long-gamers in the party have motives other than "if Trump wanted to close the border, we must open it," but I think that the party rank and file really have that simple a view of it.
Now that the real world problems of seeing to the millions of migrants that have entered during Biden's tenure have bled into blue cities, many are singing a different tune. No matter, the administration remains all-in on its policies - though it is (laughably) making some new noises about how the GOP is obstructing remedies.
Q: Mr. President, would you call the situation on the southern border a “crisis”?
THE PRESIDENT: No, but I wish they would react. I’ve been pushing them — my Republican colleagues — since I got into office. I think we have to make major changes at the border. I’ve been pushing it. I’m prepared to make significant alterations at the border. And there are negotiations going on for the last five weeks, so I’m hopeful we’ll get there.
From a political perspective, I can easily understand the GOP not wanting to "play nice" after three-plus years of being ignored, scolded, and mocked over the issue, and with an election coming up, not giving Joe a perceived win or the ability to offer an excuse to vote him back into office to hesitant Democratic voters. But, I also figure that Joe is offering nibbles at the margins, and were I a Republican pro-border lawmaker, I'd not settle for anything less than a major and binding flip flop of the administration's no-border policy.
Six months ago, I figured nominating Trump would be a sure-lose for the GOP, and have made the case to many Trump supporters I know that picking Haley or DeSantis would produce many of the same positive policies they hope for from Trump, would increase the likelihood of those policies being enacted, and would make a GOP win far more likely. I still believe that Haley or DeSantis would far outperform Trump in the general, but at this point I'm also starting to conclude that Trump could win. Not because he's done anything to fix his standing among the skeptical, but because Biden has been so bloody awful.
And, because the immigration issue is even hotter than it was eight years ago.
I read a bit the other day that suggested Biden's fecklessness as to Iran/Yemen/Houthi assaults on shipping will doom him in November, because the supply chain disruptions and cost increases will reignite inflation. Biden and his camp have been angry at both the press and the public for not giving him credit for economic success. A bit of arrogance that's both breathtaking and informative - he's either a colossal cynic or really does live in a bubble. The inflation we've experienced these past three years is massively his fault, but he won't admit that his rampant spending has harmed the nation and eroded our dollars and he won't repent from those spendthrift ways.
Immigration and inflation.
Both are issues that produce far greater intensity than countless others that wonks and pundits carry on about. Watch your social media feeds and pay attention to the comments and memes people share, just as one form of validation.
Those of us who also spend a lot of time in the political sandbox talk about those other issues, often with great fervor, but it's not possible to apply high intensity to a dozen bits. And, while some of us can pick other single-issue litmus tests (abortion and guns come to mind), immigration and inflation are far hotter buttons than just about all the others.
Trump succeeded by correctly reading the room on immigration, and his wild-man rhetoric (e.g. 'deport them all') is another play along the same lines. Biden and company figured, I believe, that they could load several million eventual Blue voters into red states, and thus shift the map in the future while not risking much in the present. But, the assumption that Trump is so loathed, Biden could do anything he wants and still win again (indeed, his election strategy boils down to chanting MAGA in ominous tones) is running into problems.
Seems that blue-staters aren't keen on having their kids thrown out of schools to accommodate migrants, or to have their tax dollars diverted to caring for them. This is my shocked face. The legacy press is desperately trying to spin this as the GOP's fault, even going so far as to call them "migrants from Texas," and mayors and governors are trying everything they can to keep migrants out or move those they've already got elsewhere.
Immigration put Trump into office in 2016, and may do so again this year, the deluge of litigation and deballoting notwithstanding. I would much rather the GOP nominated someone else, both because someone else would have far fewer "nevers" to contend with on election day and because the country would be better off, but I cannot deny what I'm seeing.
I paraphrase James Carville in noting:
To paraphrase Carville again: it's the economy and border, stupid.
Biden seems stuck on the idea that "Bidenomics" has been a wonderful idea and can't understand why people are mad that the rent is too damned high, and so is the cost of a bag of groceries. He also acts blindsided on the illegal immigration issue and particularly vexed that Hispanics want the border enforced. It's as if his handlers forgot Hispanics are, in fact, just as American as the Anglo-Saxon descendants and most detest the hyphen in front of their citizenship.
The question of whether the populace's antipathy toward the man responsible for this will outweigh the antipathy they feel toward Trump is the key question of this election.
May God help us.
The political stalemate on immigration isn't because the GOP Congress doesn't want to give Biden a "win" on the issue. Biden's request is for more money for agents and judges to process illegal immigrants faster - into the country. The money to CLOSE the border is already there and more than sufficient, it just lacks the executive commitment to actually doing it. Under Trump's presidency, with far fewer resources, the illegal crossing rate was at a trickle. Remain in Mexico and apply for asylum THERE. That policy worked just fine. They quit coming, they quit trying. Biden has funded a cell phone app, wherein the illegals can apply online and then just march across the border, be quickly "processed" and then released into the country - with a hearing date scheduled five or six years from now. Under those terms, is it any wonder millions have done so?
But as to the gist of your column, yes, immigration and inflation have enervated the voters and their intensity on these issues is high.