A lot of the voters motivated by that particular grievance were family members or friends of the earlier undocumented community—the very people that Steven Miller and his ilk long to deport.
Surprisingly, it turns out that putting together a plurality of the inconsistently aggrieved was a winning strategy. Unsurprisingly, trying to govern based on a coalition of people with diametrically opposed views is going to be a big, big problem.
The video linked above—based on events of the last few days—illustrates the point very well.
A Note on the Midas Touch Network
During the election season, I watched them from time to time. As far as I can tell, they were earning viewers by continually making the case that the good guys were beating the bad guys—right up until the point when the bad guys won the election. Now, they may be trying to earn viewers by exaggerating the problems that Trump will have governing.
Be that as it may, I can tell you what I am, and am not, trying to do in these posts. I am not intentionally selecting facts just to make our side feel good. I am trying to be objective.
So go ahead and reach for that shaker of salt. Take a little. And then enjoy watching the video.
Recently, I have called attention to some scathing criticisms of Kamala Harris—and of the Democratic political class in general.
But, lest we forget, they damn near pulled it off.
Of those who voted, the latest data show that 50.2 percent voted for someone other than Trump. Specifically, Harris got 48.3 percent while 1.9 percent voted for Jill Stein or RFK Jr. or someone else.
And no, ladies and germs, I am not saying our side should be complacent because our margin of defeat could have been a lot worse.
I am saying: by all means, go on with the political autopsies, but keep a grip on.
The Politico piece appears to be mostly straightforward reporting of what people said in focus groups—the people in question being several categories of wishy-washy, definitely non-elite voters. Takeaway: “In a trio of focus groups, even voters whopreviously backed Democrats cast the party as weak and overly focused on diversity and elites, according to research by the progressive group Navigator Research.”
If you care about American democracy, the N.Y. Times article is most definitely worth a read. In it, Frank Bruni of the Times moderates an email conversation among himself, Tim Ryan, the former congressman, and two others. (“Ms. Shenker-Osorio is the host of the podcast “Words to Win By.” Ms. Smith was a senior adviser to Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign.”)
Some highlights:
Lis Smith: The Democratic brand is in the toilet. Many of the Democrats who succeeded this cycle — our best over-performers in House races, for instance — are people who ran against the Democratic Party brand. Trump tore down the blue wall in the industrial Midwest, but he also expanded his vote the most in our bluest and most urban areas. …
Tim Ryan: The Dems got pinned as the status quo party on inflation, instability, insecurity and every other issue facing working people. Trump was the change candidate in a year when 65 percent of people thought we are on the wrong track. And they failed to redefine themselves on the culture issues on which they were on the other side of 60 percent to 70 percent of Americans. …
Anat Shenker-Osorio: … Voters, outside of hard partisans, think most politicians lie at least some of the time. I know — we just asked them in a survey. Seventy-two percent of them said this of Republican leaders and 70 percent said this of Democrats. This is astonishingly good for authoritarians. What it means, and we hear this in nearly every focus group we do, is that they discount the threats of MAGA. It sounds like this: “Well, Trump’s just saying things. He doesn’t really mean them.” So, he gets to keep his base engaged and enraged, while also seeming like the guy who’s just going to give you a personally signed check.
Meanwhile, it’s absolutely detrimental to Democrats because their purported achievements, desirable agenda and dire warnings are all not credited as real. Nationally, extrapolating from AP VoteCast data, 19 million Biden 2020 voters sat it out this time. This was mainly a lurching couch-ward, not rightward. Why? Voters here and around the world are looking around at what there is on offer and saying: not this. …
Smith: We need to look to who succeeded and overperformed this cycle and why. Some of the top overperformers in House races couldn’t have had more disparate profiles — Pat Ryan, Jared Golden, Tom Suozzi, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, Angie Craig. What they had in common was that they were willing to run against the party brand, they met voters where they are on their frustrations with the border and public safety issues, and they talked more about their vision for the future than how bad Donald Trump is. I’d also throw in another thing — these members largely were among the first to call for Joe Biden to step down as nominee. They weren’t in the crew of Democrats who told voters not to believe what they’d seen with their own eyes in that first debate.
Shenker-Osorio: If you want to look at successes that seem to defy “conventional wisdom,” to me that’s Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky. He has consistently run on, not from, his values, mixing economic populism with a clear and powerful explanation for the siren song of the right wing: scapegoating, hate peddling and fear mongering. Beshear creates the biggest possible “we” and then conveys why right-wing attacks on groups that have been intentionally “othered” are Trojan horses to enable widespread harms, from taking away our freedoms, to controlling our lives, to screwing over our livelihoods. …
The largest voting bloc in the United States is almost always voter-eligible nonvoters. Folks are opting out of participation for a reason — and it’s feeling as if neither party is actually focused on making life better for working people. Democrats cannot be running as the protectors of norms and institutions, and yes, that includes democracy, because democracy never bought anyone dinner.
Bruni: I’m encouraged, in a way, that I don’t sense Democrats spoiling to fight Trump on every initiative and at every turn. Democrats cannot live on a diet of sour grapes, and that kind of blanket resistance could look less like principle than like reflexive obstructionism and haughty dismissal of election results, and could doom Democrats to failure in the fights that count the very most. Which are those? Which of Trump’s proposals must Democrats do all in their power to defeat and — maybe just as important — are there proposals or general priorities of his that aren’t awful and that Democrats should try to find ways to work with him on?
Ryan: We should be all over the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. food reform initiative. We don’t have to agree with him on everything and we can fight him on other things. It is criminal what we have allowed to happen. We are basically poisoning our own people, driving up health care costs, lowering productivity while it’s all being subsidized by the taxpayer for American farmers to grow crops that go into fake food.
We should put forward a dozen recommendations on the “department of government efficiency” effort. Our federal government is so wasteful and bloated that we should be able to come up with major reforms to save money and help government provide better services.
Smith: We don’t actually know what Trump is serious about doing as president yet. Unlike Tim, I don’t think Kennedy was picked to take on Big Ag and Big Food — I think all of that is being used as a smokescreen for his truly dangerous views on things like vaccines. We should fight Trump and Kennedy tooth and nail if they sow doubt about lifesaving vaccines for polio and M.M.R., because that will actually have life-or-death consequences for Americans (see what Kennedy did in Samoa).
But broadly, we shouldn’t just oppose things because Trump supports them. If he really wants to build more American manufacturing or cut taxes for the middle class we should be for it.
Mr. Guastella works for the Center for Working Class Politics, an institution not previously within my radar screen, but one that probably should be within our awareness.
The article is published by the Guardian, so you can read if for free. Its message is broadly consistent with a theme that I have been pushing: that we progressives need to listen to the non-college-educated working class once again, hear their concerns, and form a coalition with them to advance our common interests, versus the ultra-wealthy business elites.
After damning the Democrats and Kamala Harris for not embracing the working class, Guastella writes,
OK, so Harris represented limousine liberals, that still doesn’t explain why blue-collar voters would choose an uber-wealthy playboy like Trump, not to mention his billionaire henchman Elon Musk, over her. And, according to analyses from the Center for Working Class Politics, working-class voters did prefer Trump. But we don’t need some description of “false consciousness” to understand why this might be. The fact is working-class people do not have a genuine political home in our new Gilded Age, they are forced to ally either with billionaires in the Republican party or Democratic liberal elites in hopes that someone will allay their concerns. Fixing this requires a politics that confronts both. …
Almost all of the content of American politics – the candidates, the policies, the priorities – concerns the top 20% of the income and wealth hierarchy. Remember, less than 2% of members of Congress come from working-class backgrounds. Working-class candidates face immense political obstacles because they have neither the money, nor the credentials – won in the halls of elite schools, conferences and institutions – needed to break into the fortress of American government. Many voted for Trump in the hopes that he could take a wrecking ball to the whole thing.
Having made these important points, Guastella then segs into the argument that Democrats must reverse course not only on economic issues but also on non-economic cultural and values issues:
Though, it will not be enough for the left to protest the billionaire economy. An honest assessment of progressive liabilities is in order. Those on the left must confront the cultural elite that has pushed the party away from workers on all sorts of non-economic issues. While Trump and his billionaires won’t be able to adequately represent the economic interests of the working class, liberals must recognize that their party doesn’t represent their values. The Democrats captured by highly credentialed clerics has led them to embrace the cultural values of an aristocratic elite. From crime, to climate, to gender politics, and the border, mainstream liberal opinion is much further from the views of workers than many liberals are willing to admit. And this too is a class story.
Well, Knock! Knock! I Have Two Important Things to Say About Embracing Alleged Working Class Culture and Values.
First important thing: Yes, yes, it’s high time to reconsider some issues. For example, lots of minority people feel that aggressively pushing DEI can make them look like “token hires”—not the accomplished, fully deserving people they are.
Second important thing: But while we’re doing all this cultural/value reconsidering, let’s insert a step: think carefully about what is the right thing to do, not the thing to do that might improve your messaging.
And here is why we need to actually consider the right thing to do: because, ladies and germs, the right thing to do will probably, at the end of the day, also be the politically expedient thing to dol.
So … here’s a post, mainly about Trump’s lawsuit against the Des Moines Register et al., because they published a poll that turned out to be wrong, and his allegedly forthcoming lawsuit against CBS because he didn’t like the way they edited a Sixty Minutes interview.
In my view, Tim Miller makes some good points in the video, but let me cut to the chase, as the high flyers like to say.
“Commercial Speech” or “Political Speech”?
Commercial speech is now (and has been for some years) deemed to enjoy limited First Amendment protection, but is subject to regulation, in order to prevent fraud in the sale of goods and services. One such law is the Iowa Consumer Frauds Act—the only law that Trump’s lawyer claims was violated by the newspaper and the pollster.
The legal regime that governs political speech is very different from that governing commercial speech. Political lies are generally protected from judicial scrutiny by freedom of speech and freedom of the press. A moment’s reflection will let you see the reasons for this principle: in essence, to protect the political process and to protect the courts from being politicized.
In the Iowa case, it’s unlikely in the extreme that the poll’s error was intentional, on the part of the pollster, or the newspaper, or the newspaper’s parent company. But let’s pretend we’re in law school, and let’s assume, for the sake of the discussion, that the pollster and the newspaper did lie intentionally.
Trump’s lawsuit should be summarily dismissed. First, the words of the Iowa Consumer Frauds Act don’t apply to the alleged intentional political lie. Second, it’s highly unlikely that the Iowa Legislature intended its Consumer Frauds Act to apply to political speech. Third, even if the Legislature did have such an intent, its intent to regulate political speech would violate multiple legal precedents on freedom of the press and freedom of speech.
And, By the Way, People Who Live in Glass Houses Shouldn’t Throw Stones
If Trump wins his Iowa lawsuit—which he will not—then he will have created a precedent under which he can be prosecuted for multiple violations each day, if not each hour.
Defamation, the N.Y. Times v. Sullivan Rule, and the Finer Points of Rape
“Creative” as he was—in the pejorative sense of the word—the legal genius who crafted Trump’s Iowa lawsuit did not claim defamation, because predicting that you’re going to lose an election does not reflect badly on your character.
By contrast, in the recently settled Trump case against ABC News, Trump worked himself into a high dudgeon because the jury only found he had forcefully inserted his middle finger into the victim’s vagina—not his actual dick—where has New York law on “rape” would have required penetration by the presidential pecker. Sexual assault? Yes. “Rape”? No. How dare you accuse My Excellency of rape when I only victimized her vagina with my finger!
Why indeed? Well, as Sharry explains, there were lots of reasons: Republican bad faith, especially back in 2013, plus lots of misjudgments and political malpractice on the liberal side.
But it’s got to get fixed.
Frank Sharry is an immigration activist and advocate. If you’re interested, check out his Wikipedia article. As a point of personal privilege, I was happy to learn that he’s a Princeton man. As we used to say back in the day: “Princeton in the Nation’s Service.”
Fourth, lots of people like me were reluctant to crack down on undocumented immigrants. After all, didn’t Rabbi Jesus teach us to welcome the stranger? And didn’t Exodus and Leviticus in the Hebrew Scriptures teach us the very same thing?
Conclusion?
It’s a win-win situation!
Opening the floodgates to undocumented immigrants is the right and moral thing to do!
And we economically comfortable folks get to benefit from cheap labor.
Like I said, a win-win.
And if unskilled working class people here in the United States see their wages depressed, well then, they had just better reread what Jesus said in Matthew 25, learn to share, and not be so picky about what wages they receive. If they have to choose between paying the rent and buying groceries, that’s just the burden they have to bear in order to do the right thing and welcome the stranger.
Oh Wait! That Sounds Like Hypocrisy!
It sounds like prosperous progressives are using purported morality as a cover for economic oppression of the working class.
Maybe we should all cover ourselves in sackcloth and ashes, rend our garments, and spend the next six months in profound contemplation of our own wickedness.
No! No! No! No! No!
Listen up, folks. Here’s the takeaway message.
We are in a political crisis. Trump and his enablers have leveraged concern over immigration to get the electorate to vote for a proto-fascist regime.
If your house is on fire, you put out the damn fire before you start to think deeply about what caused the fire.
Contemplating our own alleged hypocrisy at length is a luxury we can no longer afford.
Establishing a fine moral balance between the worth of a poor person in Guatemala versus a not quite so poor person here in the United States is, likewise, something that we cannot afford to do.
What we MUST do—well in advance of the 2026 election—is to work with the Latino community to develop a politically acceptable solution.
This follows up on my Dec. 10 post on immigration. On Dec. 11, the New York Times published the analysis I have just cited. It’s long and it’s meaty. If you want to know what’s actually going on, I highly recommend it.
Two things stood out for me.
Thing One: The Immense Scope of the Immigration Surge Under Biden
The Times writes,
Total net migration during the Biden administration is likely to exceed eight million people. That’s a faster pace of arrivals than during any other period on record, including the peak years of Ellis Island traffic, when millions of Europeans came to the United States. Even after taking into account today’s larger U.S. population, the recent surge is the most rapid since at least 1850.
And, by the way,
About 60 percent of immigrants who have entered the country since 2021 have done so without legal authorization, according to a Goldman Sachs report based on government data.
The combined increases of legal and illegal immigration have caused the share of the U.S. population born in another country to reach a new high, 15.2 percent in 2023, up from 13.6 percent in 2020. The previous high was 14.8 percent, in 1890.
Thing Two: The Effect on Working Class Wages
According to the article,
The Congressional Budget Office has concluded that wage growth for Americans who did not attend college will be lower than it otherwise would have been for the next few years because of the recent surge. On the flip side, higher immigration can reduce the cost of services and help Americans, many with higher incomes, who do not compete for jobs with immigrants.
Bernard Yaros Jr., a lead U.S. economist at Oxford Economics, a research firm, described the recent increases as “something that we really haven’t seen in recent memory.” Mr. Yaros said that they had “helped cool wage growth.”
Facing MAGA 