We tamed the (immigration) lion in their cage, but it just wasn’t enough to change their hearts

Here is a further sign that Democrats are beginning to rethink the illegal immigration issue (or, as suggested below by Ken Hechtman who sent me this material, to rethink the way they spin the illegal immigration issue). The Democratic Strategist, a website edited by Clintonites Stanley Greenberg and William Galston, has an article arguing that illegal immigration is a legitimate concern that Democrats need to address. The article even says that the attack on immigration reformers as “racists” is not true and is losing its power to scare people. Such talk coming from influential members of a party that thus far has had as extreme an open-borders position as could possibly exist is certainly a promising development. But it is very far from indicating—as the liberal spin artist Peter Beinart said the other week, with a mystifying amen from John Derbyshire—that the Democrats today are stronger on immigration control than the Republicans. What it does indicate is that proponents of immigration law enforcement and border control—virtually all of whom are Republicans or supporters of the Republican party—are winning the debate.

- end of initial entry -

Ken Hechtman, a leftist journalist in Canada, writes:

I read a bit more into it than that.

Liberal spin artists now have two choices. They can either start representing themselves as stronger on enforcement (whether they mean it or not) or else they can keep arguing amnesty vs. enforcement and lose otherwise unlosable elections.

The enforcement debate is heads you win, tails we lose. If we keep it at room temperature, we have to concede that ordinary, decent people aren’t crazy or evil for wanting enforcement. If we start name-calling, people tune us out.

LA replies:

As your answer indicates, you and I have two different sets of concerns here:

I’m concerned about stopping illegal immigration. Therefore if the Democrats are just dishonestly spinning the issue in order to gain support, that is something to be exposed.

You’re concerned about electing Democrats. Therefore you see Democrats’ dishonest spin as a positive thing, as a step forward from the Democrats’ previous, honest (and politically losing) position of openly supporting open borders.

The blatant lack of sincerity of Democrats on fundamental national issues (e.g. their four day “National Defense” extravaganza at the ‘04 convention), will not sell anymore. The Democrats are a party of aliens, wearing human masks. The mask keeps slipping. Pretending to be patriotic, pretending to be human, won’t work anymore. Yet the left is unwilling to abandon its leftism. So it can’t win electorally in the U.S. as it now exists. Therefore the only way the left can win elections is by bringing in more Third-World immigrants to cancel out the political power of the native white population. The left’s political survival depends on its destroying its host nation.

Ken replies:

“So it can’t win electorally in the U.S. as it now exists. Therefore the only way the left can win elections is by bringing in more Third-World immigrants to cancel out the political power of the native white population.”

I didn’t realize how far that trend has gone. Another couple of factoids from Greenberg’s site: The Democrats do not lose one single non-white demographic in the US and they do not win one single nationwide white demographic more than $5,000 above the family poverty line.

Ken sent excerpts from two articles at the Democratic Strategist site:

The Demographic Case for Whistling Past Dixie, By Thomas Schaller

Race: Democrats win among every major non-European ethnic minority in America, save Cuban-Americans. The Democrats’ share of support is particularly high among African Americans (about 90%), Native Americans (80-90%), and Latinos (60%, but a growing worry in the Bush era). Even Asian Americans, who favored Bush41 over Clinton by 24 points in 1992, went for Kerry over Bush by 17 points in 2004

[…]

George W. Bush (70%) and Ronald Reagan (71%) got basically the same share of the southern white vote, but Bush won narrowly whereas Reagan won in a landslide. Why? Because there are fewer white voters overall, and Kerry did far better among non-southern whites than Walter Mondale did. Democrats do not have a white voter problem generally; what they specifically have is a southern white voter problem.

Message of Misery, by Anne Kim, Adam Solomon and Jim Kessler

$23,700. That is the household income level at which a white person became more likely to vote for a Republican over a Democrat in congressional races in 2004. That’s $5,000 above the poverty line for a family of four, less than half the median income of the typical voting household of all races, and an emphatic repudiation of all things Democratic among the white middle class. Obtaining a sustainable Democratic majority in either house will be impossible unless there is a significant change in this economic tipping point.

To solve this problem, Democrats must first realize that they have a problem—no, actually a crisis—with the middle class. Democrats—the self-described party of the middle class—have not won the middle class vote in at least a decade. Among all voters with $30,000 to $75,000 in household income, Bush bested Kerry by six-points and congressional Republicans won by four-points. Democrats continued to win nine of ten black voters of all income levels, but Hispanic margins have decreased as their economic situation has improved. And as noted above, we got slaughtered among the white middle class.

Ken continues:

I like this site. It’s got a very high signal-to-noise ratio. I get very little out of reading most policy debates these days. Too many people just recite the crap their side’s spindocs have filled their heads with. They’re good talking points and all, but the second time you hear one, it sounds like a talking point. The only way to hear an honest, realistic, non-delusional debate is to listen in on the spindocs talking to each other.

Mr. Hechtman also says of the Democrats intentions:

I figure they honestly mean to be dishonest but will get trapped by their own spin.

They may be making promises now that they genuinely intend to break once in power. But once they get there, the tracking polls are going to tell them the price of breaking those promises in 2007 is going to be another Republican president in 2008 and they’re going to have no choice but to deliver some enforcement.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 07, 2006 12:40 PM | Send