FiveThirtyEight recently asked a panel of 2,000 Americans what issues worried them the most. The answer was inflation, which is pretty predictable these days.
But I'm more interested in how much Republicans and Democrats disagree about things. In the case of inflation, 42% of Democrats thought it was a top worry while 65% of Republicans thought so too. That's a difference of 23 percentage points.
But that isn't the area of biggest difference. Immigration is:
You don't have to believe in the great replacement or anything like that to understand that this has been a very, very large difference of opinion for a very long time. It's the second biggest worry for Republicans behind inflation—which is a transitory issue—while it barely registers with Democrats. This is going to haunt our politics forever unless Democrats eventually agree to take it seriously.
Kevin, what would Democrats need to do that they haven't done in order to take immigration seriously? You always neglect explanation.
Recently, you said the voting rights effort of Democrats was a "bad bill". Sans explanation.
And will I see a column by him tomorrow decrying the slaughter of small schoolkids by another shooter? And explaining what he thinks should be done about it? I doubt it. Knock me over with a feather if I do.
Just more graphs and charts of questionable relevance.
Like that bill matters. Kevin spouts useless polling all the time.
They could start by putting a reference to a secure border back in the party platform. Wen they removed it several years ago that indicated their shift to the left and tolerance of illegal immigration.
"Take seriously" means "capitulate to Republican demands", of course. Republicans have no agency, you see. They're like the weather, you can only react to them. Notice you'll never see him demand Republicans "take seriously", say, school shootings.
Kevin is being a product of his environment.
Inflation????? Not anymore
Fwiw, Gaetz is a jew. It's a Dutch cover name which is closer to Gavitz in real saying. Similar to how "Green/e" is a Anglo Saxon cover for Greenberg/Grunberg.
I knew I was on the right track.
https://smolenyak.medium.com/meet-your-great-great-grandfather-matt-gaetz-31abbf40ab82
Deviating from the theme that all Republicans are racists.....Republicans are obsessed with the rule of law. People who illegally cross the border are breaking the law. The Republican argument is that they should not be rewarded for this by being allowed jobs, sending their kids to schools, etc. So 'taking it seriously' would mean that Democrats say that they will uphold the rule of law at the border. A fun counterargument to Republicans is that asylum seekers, are in fact, abiding by the laws of the US.
I've known enough brown and black legal immigrants to know that they often resent people who cross illegally.
A lot of people labor under the misconception that immigrating legally to the US is just a matter of sending a letter to the State Department politely requesting a green card or something and that these people trying to sneak over the southern border are just scofflaws who deserve scorn and punishment. In reality, gaining a legal visa, particularly if you're just a poor laborer, is an enormously expensive, complicated, and lengthy process. This byzantine bureaucracy creates a black market for immigration. You'd think conservatives would sympathize with this. If taxes on gasoline suddenly shot up to $50 a gallon, wouldn't you understand if people started stealing or smuggling petrol to survive and blame foolish government policies for forcing people to skirt the law? Why isn't the solution to cut the red tape, reduce costs, and open up more and easier venues to legal immigration?
Oh, right. The racism.
In reality, gaining a legal visa, particularly if you're just a poor laborer, is an enormously expensive, complicated, and lengthy process.
It's worse than that. Absent blood relatives in the US, it tends to be next to impossible for such people, no matter how much they're willing to spend or how patient they are.
It's about $10K (2019 dollars) and ~5 years to go through the green card process with mild levels of legal assistance. So yeah, it is not for the lower class. But it is not impossible if you are considered skilled labor.
Right now our country uses H2A and H2B short-term visas for many classes of labor. If you want to hear Republican business people vent, get them talking about how their competitor companies turn a blind eye to the illegal immigrants among their visas holders, or just flat out use illegal immigrants. You can tell who is serious about all this by asking them what they think of eVerify. If they support, then they are probably honest brokers, if they are against, then they are likely parasitizing illegal labor.
There is an excellent series from 'This American Life' on these issues. I used to be ambivalent about illegal labor but after listening to that podcast and doing some research, I'm pretty firmly against it now because I think it hurts the labor movement in our country and is detrimental to legal immigrant labor. And exploitive with a high 'tax' to criminal elements.
Ideally we could massively increase legal low-skilled labor with path(s) to citizenship. But I think Dems who breezily claim 'they don't care and if you do you are racist' shut the door on some points where we could improve the lives of many, many people by finding compromise with the big business focused Republicans (who don't watch Fox News).
Yay! We can find compromise with 100 Republicans. That will help a lot!
The right of asylum is a matter of national
& international law; skin color is not a consideration. People who are proud of their ancestors' early arrival here should remember that they weren't all vetted.
Rs are "just for the rule of law", eh? Then the obvious step will be to decriminalize crossing the border. It used to be that way, and not all that long ago. Folks would come across from Mexico, work a day, and go home at night, to return the following day. Everybody benefited.
Once the felony designation for border crossing was removed, we'd get to see the ACTUAL Republican motivations. This "rule of law" thing is as legitimate as their "Christian faith" and their "pro-life" stance.
They only care about the law when they can use it against other people. When asked to follow the law themselves they shrug.
There's a difference between assuming people are innocent until proven guilty and violating human rights to check and see if someone is in the U.S. illegally. But keep on being racist.
Republican voters have been completely sucked into this xenophobic Fox News narrative that the border is being overrun with hordes of "illegals" carrying fentanyl, which they will then use to drug and rape their daughters before somehow registering to vote Democratic and replace the Constitution with the works of Ibram X. Kendi . They're not, of course. The vast majority are just poor people seeking asylum -- which is completely legal under US and international law -- from war, poverty, and violence.
The leaders of the Republican party used to stand up pretty stalwartly to this kind of racist nativism. But then along came Trump and everyone's testicular fortitude around that issue shriveled instantly and now its Tucker Carlson's world and we have to live, and die, in it.
Your trying way to hard. Nobody cares about Republican lies. Fentanyl was China export from 20 years ago and everyone knows it. Republicans aren't xenophobic, but lying con men who have been running illegal immigrants to the US through religious and business associations for decades. Forget the southern border. How many Asiatics surge through a year???? Millions.
"The vast majority are just poor people seeking asylum -- which is completely legal under US and international law -- from war, poverty, and violence."
That' not completely correct. Poverty does not make you eligible to seek asylum. For some reason many liberals think it does. To be eligible for asylum you you have been a victim of persecution (or have reasonable belief that you will be persecuted) in your native country on the grounds of either your, race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership of a social group. Poverty does not make you eligible for asylum.
Regardless of the merits of each individual case, people seeking asylum are following the law. It is then part of their due process to determine if they indeed qualify for asylum or not, but until that determination is made, anyone calling them illegals, criminals, or some other disparaging term while they are following the established process either doesn't actually know the laws, or is simply a bigot mad at the idea that some of these mostly non-white people might actually qualify for legal residence.
Democrats take Immigration seriously when Republicans take climate seriously? Why should Republicans take anything seriously when they can get everything they want just by finagling the system? Supreme Court, Senate, filibuster ....
If immigration were fixed, like abortion, it would remove a key culture war wedge issue that Republicans use to rile up their base. Hence they will staunchly oppose any effort to reform immigration and make legal immigration easier because then you wouldn't have these desperate people trying to cross the border illegally and then what would Ted Cruz or Matt Gaetz do for their shameless Fox News photo ops where they stand with CBP agents on the Rio Grande and slag Joe Biden?
Lying with statistics....
"Crime" and "gun violence" are lumped together and there is not much of a difference between parties....except....
Democrats want to regulate guns to help prevent mass shootings and Republicans want to flood the streets with more guns. If I was conspiracy minded, I might think Republicans like gun violence because it scares people--then they can prey on those fears....
Republicans also need the NRA’s support, and the NRA’s raison d’être is to help gun manufacturers sell more guns, so naturally they want more shootings, more fear, more frightened ‘good guys’ rushing to the gun store …
Bingo. It's all about the gun-humping. The NRA promotes gun sales; the gun manufacturers line the pockets of the NRA; everyone enjoys hookers and blow.
Oh! That explains it. Trump created an insurrection to scare Democrats into arming themselves so they can fight back when Democracy is destroyed. I'd say it worked pretty well.
I would have thought that more people would have followed Gov. Abbott"s Twitter lead yeards ago, exhorting Texans to just go out & regain the lead in gun purchases when Californians had bought more one year than his constituents did. Wonder how much his NRA contributions total.
fyi:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/may/25/shootings-arent-a-sign-america-is-broken-its-working-exactly-as-intended
I am skeptical of how the question on abortion was defined in the polling.
A tiny spread of difference between Democrats and Republicans on the most diverse issue since slavery?
Seriously?
This the question they were asked
"Which of the following topics do you find the most worrying to you personally? (Select up to three)"
Perhaps the better question would have been: what do you think distinguishes your party from the other.
Yes, the way the question was asked was far from the best.
A friend of mine likes to use what she calls the hard lines, if you cross any of them the wrong way you're never, ever, going to get nominated by your party:
Abortion
Guns
Immigration.
Sounds more like the rule of three as enforced by today's Republicans, since the Democratic Party hasn't blackballed all dissent by its elected representatives. Cuellar just beat a challenger in Texas, & he isn't pro-choice, as I recall.
Yes. Cuellar is the outlier - the only Democratic Congressman who isn't pro-choice.
And he barely won.
And on the other side, both Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska support abortion rights. But again outliers.
On the other two crucial political identity issues, try to find a solid anti-immigration Democrat or one who is a proud member of the NRA. And, the reverse for any major office Republican (or even small office).
At the top, try to imagine either party selecting a national candidate who crosses one or more of the lines.
These are the no-compromise issues.
Obama "took immigration seriously" - he deported a record number of undocumented immigrants - and Republicans didn't give him any credit for that. Biden hasn't changed Trump's immigration policies much, and Republicans aren't showing any appreciation for that. What do you think Democrats could do to win Republican support for immigration policies? Democrats are basically where may Republicans were under Bush II, the Republicans have moved way to the right. The country needs more immigration, net less. Maybe Democrats can find a way to talk about it that would appeal to swing voters and rural voters better.
Dude, us immigration has been essentially the same since 2004. A few new bells and whistles.
To quote from a major pro-immigration group:
,i>"Taken together, President Barack Obama’s immigration policies amounted to a centrist approach, with individual policies garnering harsh criticism from both extremes of the debate on U.S. immigration as he balanced a desire to welcome new immigrants and provide sensible reform regarding the 12 million undocumented immigrants in the country, while also enforcing current laws and keeping the nation’s borders secure."
He offset the deportation rate (which by the way declined a great deal in his 2nd term) with pro-active executive orders and programs - which kept criticism of him in check within the party.
He certainly did not act on or espouse the, anti-immigration on principal, policies - if he did, he would have lost either nomination, and/or elections.
Nope. He won the nomination for taking it seriously.
Incorrect. Dems have moved to the left more than Repubs have moved to the right on immigration.
https://www.npr.org/2019/02/19/694804917/democrats-used-to-talk-about-criminal-immigrants-so-what-changed-the-party
Interestingly border crossings plunged in April with Ukranian refugees stopped coming that way. If the media understood seasonal flows and what the Ukrainian war was, better news can be done. That so called historic March wasn't what they thought it was.
Think he did it?
https://i.redd.it/l4j9pzbtxf191.jpg
What is it that we should take seriously? There should be no immigration?
Enforcement of border security. When the Deputy Chair of the DNC wears a t-shirt that says (in Spanish, no less), "I Don't Believe in Borders" that a pretty good sign the party doesn't enforcement of immigration laws seriously.