One of the most urgent questions of this dangerous era is how we have so seemingly quickly arrived at the precipice of authoritarianism, the guardrails and traditions of American democracy trashed and abandoned in the space of a mere couple of years. A good part of the answer will lie in the gradual transformation of the Republican Party into a proto-authoritarian party over the past decades, in no small part driven by whatever anti-democratic measures were necessary to suppress minority voters, distract white voters from the inequality and corporate exploitation destroying the American dream, and enact the misogynistic and homophobic dreams of people who dared to claim, against all rational and moral evidence, that they acted in god’s name.
But the flip side to our crisis is that too many Democratic politicians, as well as millions upon millions of American voters, still don’t recognize the scope of the challenge, don’t understand that this is about much more than Donald Trump, who has brought to the fore ideas that have been latent in Republican politics, but which were bound to break out sooner or later given white panic over demographic change, growing economic inequality that inevitably heightens everyone’s status anxiety, and the inexorable growth of the executive power under presidents of both parties. Every day, I am feeling more and more that all the emphasis on Donald Trump’s role in our crisis is leading us astray, as it distracts from the equally pernicious role of a GOP that enables his worst impulses, and whose regressive social and economic agenda he has been happy to embrace as his own.
Part and parcel of this failure to fully recognize the direction the GOP has been pushing our politics is an abysmal failure on the part of Democrats to offer a robust countervailing vision of a more democratic, egalitarian, and inclusive America. The good news is that our time of crisis has sparked such a reckoning among Democrats; probably the key question for their large field of presidential candidates is how much fundamental change will need to be part of defeating Donald Trump in 2020. A related piece of good news is that Democrats seem to recognize the importance of hashing out this question. I feel like a good rule of thumb is that Democrats are generally on the right track the more their discussions of the future aren’t simply about countering the president, but about outflanking and obscuring his dour and regressive agenda.
Yet on a central issue, Democratic failure to define the terms of debate continues to offer the president a path to mayhem, division, and long-term damage to both the American soul and American economy. Exploiting racial and economic fears by demonizing and abusing Latin American immigrants is his premier strategy, but this has only been possible due to Democrats’ politically unwise choice to continue fighting more or less within the terms of debate Trump has laid out. Immigration is central to Trump’s political vision, but it’s also critical to America’s identity, economy, and future; it’s far past time for Democrats to hammer home Trump’s vulnerabilities on this front, and to stop playing defense.
In a recent piece, Matthew Yglesias of Vox describes in clear, logical fashion the various ways in which immigration has been a net good for the American economy, building our country into the powerhouse it is today in ways that are rarely reflected on. It is hard to come away from his article and not conclude that opponents of immigration simply have no idea how economic growth comes about, and that they have relied on bad-faith and just plain wrong arguments to accuse immigrants of taking more than they give to the country.
And a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll suggests that Americans are deeply receptive to the truth about immigration. Even as the Democrats have inexplicably allowed Donald Trump to retain the initiative on this issue, it turns out that the president’s immigration policies are quite unpopular with middle of the road voters. Post columnist Greg Sargent reminds us that the president’s effort to make the 2018 midterms about invading immigrant caravans did nothing to preserve the GOP’s house majority (though others have argued that it may have helped them preserve seats in the Senate). I’ve said before that I think Trump has played a meta-game with immigration, in that his abuses against Latin American migrants force the Democrats to spend time defending non-voters, playing into Trump’s goal of making them seem more supportive of non-Americans than citizens. But these poll results suggest the opposite may also be true - a lot of voters are on to Trump’s con game, in which he’d rather talk about hurting immigrants than helping Americans. Not everyone, it seems, thinks immiserated refugees are either a safety threat or an employment challenge; and this is without the Democrats offering a full-bore challenge to the president’s false premises.
Americans know hate-mongering when they see it. Some revel in it, and are with the president; but most are appalled by it. The more Democrats can take the wind out of the sails of Trump’s claims that immigrants are stealing jobs, or wreaking havoc, the more he’ll be reduced to anti-immigrant appeals based purely on racism and hate, which most Americans will be able to judge and condemn on their own.
