As the midterm elections have approached, and polls have shown that there’s a fairly high probability that the Democrats will take the House of Representatives, the GOP and President Trump have engaged in histrionic attacks on immigrants as a threat to the country, and a reason to vote for the GOP. I have seen some suggestions that it is the dire straits of Republican prospects that have led them to embrace this extremism as their closing argument; though that may be so, it is just as likely that the racism and nativism that Donald Trump has brought into full expression as core tenants of the Republican Party would have been foregrounded under any electoral circumstances.
The most extreme example to date is the president’s obsessive focus on a large group of migrants making their way from south of Mexico to the United States border. His attacks on the group as a threat to the United States, his suggestion that “unknown Middle Easterners” are part of the caravan, and his slander that the Democrats have some sinister role in the appearance of this immigrant procession make up a paranoid, toxic stew that hits all the hot buttons of Trump’s distract-and-rule approach to governance. The opposition is filled with traitors; immigrants are evil and out to destroy the United States; Middle Eastern terrorists have formed an alliance with immigrants to destroy our way of life.
These arguments are so over the top, so divorced from observable reality, and, crucially, so very predictable, that I think we need to ask the question of whether our central problem is not simply Trump’s willingness to demonize and lie in order to win, but the bizarre and inexcusable inability of the Democrats to anticipate and refute such deeply stupid and immoral arguments. Where is the coordinated effort to unpack what Trump is doing and so rob his rhetoric of its paranoid power? Why have Democrats not laid the groundwork for why immigration is good for the country in order to change the terms of the debate, so that Trump’s attacks are seen for the foolishness and racism that they are? And why is there not laser-like focus on asking the question of why Donald Trump is so eager to scare people about things that aren’t actual threats?
Part of my frustration is that this work of re-framing the immigration debate needed to have been done already, before the closing weeks of the midterms. The last thing Democrats need is for this election to be about immigration, which is just about the worst battleground for Democrats to engage in. This isn’t because the Democrats have worse policies than the GOP — far from it — but because it puts them in the deeply unhelpful position of defending newcomers and non-citizens at the very time they need to be appealing to actual citizens for their votes. One of the main axes of American politics right now is a widespread perception that politicians don’t fight for Americans’ interests. This makes the Republicans‘ immigration rhetoric all the more infuriating, and all the more needing of reframing, as the biggest challenges to our country are related to a more complex mix that includes super-sized corporations, globalization, weakened unions, a lack of democracy in the workplace and boardroom, and systemic racism.
Trump and the GOP attack immigrants because they don’t want to talk about these true challenges to America. At its best, a successful strategy would remind Americans of this fact every time Trump or a Republican politician yammers or tweets about scary foreigners. Mockery is justified and appropriate, as Americans are being asked to view their country not as the most powerful in the history of the world, but as somehow vulnerable to poor and desperate migrants. Trump asks us to trade our common humanity and patriotism for a fake nationalism and the sugar high of cruelty, all so that he can continue enriching his family and conning Americans into thinking manufacturing jobs will be coming back.
It may be that I’m overstating the problem. So far, I haven’t got the sense that the Democrats are being thrown off their game and getting sucked into a debate about imaginary northbound brown-skinned hostiles. It may be that most Americans will see through these desperate accusations. At the same time, their relentless focus on kitchen table issues can feel unequal to the great passions of hatred and nationalism that Trump is attempting to summon. It seems impossible to fully counter this racialized hatred without a sweeping, hopeful vision of unity and betterment for all Americans. It doesn’t help, either, that there is inevitable widespread media coverage of the immigrant caravan and the president’s rhetoric because of the president’s inherent ability to direct the national conversation.