Regarding the recent failed immigration bill, Greg Sargent notes (boldface mine):
You’ve probably heard that Donald Trump has “tightened his grip on the Republican Party,” or that he’s “bent the party to his will.” Pundits repeat such formulations constantly, because, well, it’s true: Trump is exerting a level of influence over his party in a way that’s unprecedented in a former president.
But what if voters aren’t aware of it?
That’s one possible takeaway from a new ABC News-Ipsos survey, which has a maddening finding: Trump gets substantially less blame for killing the bipartisan border security deal last week than any other major actor in that drama:
Americans find there is blame to go around on Congress’ failure to pass legislation intended to decrease the number of illegal crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border—with about the same number blaming the Republicans in Congress (53%), the Democrats (51%) and Biden (49%). Fewer, 39%, blame Trump.
Biden strongly supported the deal, while Trump explicitly and repeatedly called on Republicans to kill it. He expressly asked for the blame for its death to be directed at him. As the measure appeared to be dying, numerous Republicans said openly that Trump was the reason for it, even suggesting that he demanded its demise to give himself an issue against President Biden. Trump himself didn’t bother trying to hide this motive.
What’s more, Democrats get almost identical blame to Republicans, even though virtually all Senate Democrats voted for the deal, while virtually all Republicans opposed it….
Democrats must do more to communicate that Republicans are sabotaging the country because Trump told them to. Democrats spent a few days pointing out that Republicans themselves admitted they iced the deal to help Trump politically. But they mustn’t let this drop. Keep saying it. What if Biden did more in coming days to highlight the fact that the Border Patrol—which endorsed Trump—supported the deal that Trump killed?
Democrats pushed hard for a bill that much of their base didn’t like, and now Democratic officials are being dinged by normies for failing. Admittedly, immigration hasn’t been a great issue for Democrats recently, but they should be able to cast blame on Republicans. They might even have to use invective and be mean about it. And it should be obvious at this point to link everything negative to Trump.
Or they could’ve realized this was a mug’s game from the beginning, but that’s too much to ask…
mikethemadbiologist
If Biden really wants to win this election, this is THE topic he needs to bring up in the most public speech of this year (even more so than the Convention acceptance speech) – the State of the Union address.
He has Congress right there in front of them to address ALL of them in one big public shaming. That is the time to do it.
Are professional Democrats really bad at politics? Or do we have to find some way to get rid of them, as saboteurs?
I’m one of those who think if Dems want to win, they need to run on issues they are perceived as strong on. That’s not immigration. Now one can argue endlessly if this is fair or not, that Dems are perceived as having worse policy on immigration than Republicans. But that’s not going to change public perception, which seems immune to all such debate.
So IMO they need to run on issues Dems are seen as strong on: abortion, healthcare, social security, environment, and possibly economy (R’s are also perceived as stronger on economic matters, but it’s a really big one to concede – so maybe on that one, but definitely on the others).
Professional Democrats are not bad at politics, they are good at padding their own paychecks.
This is why, for example, in California, they pushed a candidate for Congress, a former Republican whose only qualification was having won the lottery, as a candidate.
The consultants get paid a proportion of the ad buy, so the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) favors bad candidates and uninspiring policies, and selects candidates almost entirely for prodigious fundraising.
Candidates who are bad at everything but fundraising are good for the pocketbooks of the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment).