According to a Pew Research Center survey taken just last month, 57% of Americans say that the top priority this year is dealing with illegal immigration. And when it comes to immigration, Joe Biden is 20 points underwater.
This is leading Democrats down a real rabbit hole. They have two choices: Be the moderates on immigration or pretend voters are out of their minds.
And they’re going to do just what you would think they’re going to do. They’re going to pretend voters are crazy and out of their minds.
On Tuesday night, after exit polling revealed how strongly Republicans care about immigration, Democrats like Jen Psaki, the former press secretary for Biden, were mocking Republicans on MSNBC for caring about immigration.
“I mean, if you look at some of these exit polls — I mean, I live in Virginia. Immigration was the number one issue, of course, I mean, again, these could change,” Psaki stated.
“Well,” MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow laughed, adding, “Virginia does have a border with West Virginia.” As Psaki laughed along, Maddow added, “A very contested area.”
Jen Psaki, Joy Reid, and Rachel Maddow are laughing on MSNBC at the fact that voters in Virginia care about immigration:
Maddow: “Well, Virginia does have a border with West Virginia.”
pic.twitter.com/MDyjJuUkzn— Greg Price (@greg_price11) March 6, 2024
Perhaps people are worried illegal immigrants are going to show up where they live and might commit crimes. Or perhaps they are worried about the vast cultural changes that could be wrought by importing millions of people who have no familiarity with American concepts of ideas such as free speech and property rights. Or perhaps they are simply worried about generating an entire economic underclass of people, many of whom will be dependent on welfare benefits and many of whom are going to be lowering the wage base and the like.
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There are a multitude of reasons why people in Virginia might be worried about illegal immigration.
But Democrats are disconnected from this issue. According to the polling data from Pew, 39% of Democrats believe that immigration is a real concern, compared to 57% of independents and 76% of Republicans. That is a high number of independents who are deeply worried about immigration, and that number is up from 53% in 2023 and 49% in 2022. Democrats, meanwhile, are still stuck down in the mid-thirties when it comes to policy goals.
This is a problem for the Democrats and the White House because they are stuck in this legacy media echo chamber in which the idea for them is to double down on the base. They’re ignoring all of it.
On Tuesday, the White House was asked about Laken Riley’s murder. She was the young woman who was allegedly killed near the University of Georgia by an illegal immigrant. And the White House tried to blame Donald Trump.
That dog is not going to hunt. The president of the United States is Joe Biden. He needs to close the border and everybody knows it.
This relates to the reality of today’s modern politics. Everyone in the media is convinced that the Right-wing has gone crazy, they’ve gone too far Right, and they’re picking crazy candidates — and there is some truth to that. If you look at the last round of senatorial races, Republicans picked some terrible candidates in winnable races, and then they lost those races.
But Democrats are now doing the same. We have a game of chicken in which both sides have decided to put the radical brick on the accelerator and then aim the cars at each other.
The question is, who is going to pull away first before the cars crash? Whoever pulls away first in this case actually wins. It is not as though if you just continue along that path and the other guy pulls away, you win. It’s the opposite.
In fact, this game of chicken has both cars aimed at the cliff. Which side is going to stop before the cliff at all? Forget about getting close to the edge. Who’s going to stop at all?
The Democrats threw out Kyrsten Sinema — who left the party and became an independent even though she would still caucus with them — in favor of hard-Left Ruben Gallego. Arizona used to be a largely red state. Then the Arizona Republican Party decided they were going to shoot themselves directly in the chest by embracing every form of election questioning they possibly could, alienating every moderate in the entire state and electing two Democratic senators and a Democratic governor.
The problem is that the underlying political character of the state of Arizona remains purple. There’s a reason why, until very recently, both senators were purple to red senators. It was John McCain until he passed away and then Jeff Flake, and both were replaced by Democrats who have attempted to act as a sort of bluish purple. Sinema was so purple that she eventually just went purple and decided to declare herself an independent. But then she decided not to run for reelection because the Democratic Party had basically cast her out, and they decided to primary her.
If only Republicans had nominated someone who had not run for governor, lost, and then claimed that she won for the last year and a half. That would have helped. But they didn’t do that. They ran Kari Lake. So it’s Kari Lake versus Ruben Gallego, Clash of the Titans.
Whoever seizes the middle ground is going to win these elections. But in some cases, both parties seem to be running away from middle ground.
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And in the presidential race, it’s Biden who’s running away from the middle ground while Trump is reaching over and grabbing it.
The secret about Trump is that he is politically moderate and rhetorically extreme. But many of the people who have been running are rhetorically extreme and politically extreme, which is not what Americans prefer.
Rhetorically extreme only works for Donald Trump. It really does not work for anyone else.
Trump is one of one in the same way that Barack Obama for Democrats was one of one.
You cannot be Trump. There is no one who can out-Trump Trump. There’s nobody who can even be in that same category. Trump is a stand-up comedian who became president of the United States because he’s extraordinarily entertaining. He is camera-magnetic. He is always funny. He’s an entertainer who became a politician, not a politician trying to be an entertainer.
All of those things are things no other politician can hold a candle to because he’s in a completely different category.