Why does Kamala Harris have less support among black and Latino voters than previous Democratic presidential candidates?Here’s why a New York Times/Siena poll shows that Harris has less support among black and Latino voters than previous Democratic presidential candidates. That was the theme of the campaign in the week after it was revealed that he won 57% of voters (compared to the estimated 63% that Joe Biden won in 2020) and 78% of Black voters, 15 points fewer. That’s more than Biden’s estimated share in 2020. In the New York Times, David Leonhart proposed an explanation for the disparity that echoes the centrist critiques we’ve been hearing a lot over the past few years. The problem lies in identity politics, especially immigration.
Leonhart said Democrats are suffering because they are “misdiagnosing the American electorate” when it comes to race and ethnicity. He said the Democratic Party has a homogeneous voting bloc of people of color whose loyalties are tied to “racial identity,” including the 2022 nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court. He assumes that it is best acquired through the act of speaking. (This is Leonhardt’s example, not mine.)
The party assumes that voters of color will be supported by progressive stances on all issues related to race, and that many non-white voters are concerned about issues such as crime and illegal immigration. He claims that he is not aware of it. He says the Biden administration has further exacerbated the effects of this misconception by relaxing rules at the U.S.-Mexico border and allowing millions of new residents to enter Mexico like a friendly checkpoint. .
While this piece makes some valid points (more on this later), there are some problems with this story. First, Democrats seem to understand that black voters may be concerned about crime. The party’s presidential candidate is a black woman who worked as a prosecutor for nearly 30 years and wrote a book on crime reduction. As president, Joe Biden has been obsessed with pumping additional funding into police at the expense of pursuing criminal justice reform, and one of Leonhardt’s colleagues, Charles Blow, has weighed in on their relative priorities in 2022. I’m even writing a column lamenting it. The current administration’s approach to this issue has not been characterized by soft, progressive appeals to identity rather than coercion.
But the argument that Biden’s “welcoming immigration policies” caused the border crisis is at the heart of Leonhardt’s paper. He cited three policies in particular. Initial attempts to suspend deportations while carrying out a broader review of immigration issues. The so-called parole program was admitting 500,000 people when CBS reported in mid-2023. And in 2021, it will expand asylum eligibility criteria for victims of domestic violence and organized crime.
It is true that under the Biden administration, the number of individuals crossing the U.S.-Mexico border to apply for asylum in the United States has increased significantly. What’s a bit confusing is that even people who cross the border illegally have a legal right to apply for asylum once they’re in the country, but the numbers are overwhelming the systems in place to deal with this. Asylum applications are occurring in the United States, and the majority of voters recognize this. As a crisis.
But Leonhardt ignores that the current border surge began during the Trump era, as seen in the graph in this article. At two points in time, in spring 2019 and late 2020, fears about illegal aliens at the southern border were higher under the Trump administration than under his liberal Democratic predecessor. In 2019, this number was double the number previously seen under the Obama administration. The Deferred Action program launched by the Obama administration in 2014, which protects certain categories of undocumented immigrants who have established residence in the country from deportation, is sometimes cited as its beginning. Points of the party’s immigration relaxation era.
Despite strict policies ostensibly to discourage crossings, the reality that crosswalks have proliferated to such a high level even under the Trump administration is that crosswalking attempts are discouraged to the point where voters refrain from doing so. challenges the assumption that there is anything Democrats (or Republicans) can do. It will be accepted and deemed “safe.” For migrants, the conditions of poverty and violence in their home countries are clearly intolerable, so they are mindful that they have determined that their best option is a long journey on foot through the desert, which will likely end in deportation. Please keep it. They will either return to their original homes or be “deported” to temporary tent camps in northern Mexico, which the Times report described as “dirty” and “filthy.”
Ben Mathis-Lilly
A phrase used by the right to explain why it’s okay for President Trump to make things up.
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In addition to this, Biden’s border policies were not really welcomed. His deportation moratorium was lifted by a judge just five days later. Even more impactful, Biden extended a COVID-19-era Trump administration policy called Title 42, which allowed the government to immediately expel asylum seekers without giving them a hearing on public health grounds. The agreement has been extended until 2023, allowing for Then, when Title 42 expired, the administration extended it until 2023. It immediately introduced what The Associated Press described as “a new set of policies to crack down on illegal crossings.”
Meanwhile, the purpose of the “parole” program Leonhardt refers to is to resettle war refugees (most notably from Ukraine and Afghanistan) and reward individuals who apply for residency through their home country rather than through Mexico. Ta. The CBS News article he links to as evidence of border policy relaxation actually concludes that “parole powers have allowed authorities to divert migrants from the southern border” (emphasis mine).
Overall, deportations are continuing at the same pace under the Biden administration as they were under the Trump administration, according to a report released in June by the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute. Adding this number to the instant deportations carried out under Title 42, MPI concludes that “the Biden administration’s approximately 4.4 million repatriations have already exceeded any single-term presidential term since the George W. Bush administration.” “There is,” he wrote. It’s not very attractive.
So what the Biden administration has done, and given the limited resources available at the border, the external factors contributing to the “influx” of migrants, and the troubling facts that are often ignored, is most Mr. Leonhardt may be wrong about what even punitive border policies can accomplish. Mainstream reporting on the issue states that the right to seek asylum is enshrined in both U.S. law and international law enacted after the Holocaust. (Current limits on resources at the border are essentially those imposed by Republicans.) His argument is that Democrats are problematic because they project an inclusive “atmosphere” toward immigration. It may be expressed more realistically as an argument that we are faced with a problem. generally by speaking in broad terms about the benefits of immigration and by continuing to support policies that provide a “path to citizenship” for undocumented people in the United States.
Is he right about that? I think the answer is still no.
First, consider the following assumption in the headline of his article: It doesn’t work that way. ” One might conclude from this that the Democratic Party, even as a minority party, is in electoral trouble. But first of all, they have won the popular vote for president in the last four elections. In 2018, they occupied the House of Representatives at the height of President Trump’s anti-immigrant crackdown. In 2020, he won the White House and both houses of Congress. In 2022, due to the poor performance of Trump-affiliated candidates across the country, he lost the House of Representatives but retained the Senate. Although polls are imprecise and the margins are pretty narrow at this point, most predictive models are leaning toward Kamala Harris winning the presidency and Democrats taking back the House. Leonhardt himself acknowledged that “Harris has won most voters of color.”
Simply put, voters are rewarding the Trump-era Democratic Party for being the party of pluralism. It may be undesirable or impossible to separate its “brand” from its reputation as broadly pro-immigration.
Certainly, there is a line that must be walked. The overall position of American voters is that illegal immigrants are OK if they settle in the country, but not if they cross the border, and of course many of them cross the border. is the only way to enter the country. Voters want “tough” border policies, but many feel President Trump’s policies are too strict. (Promising to retreat from President Trump’s policies such as the Muslim ban and family separation was something Democrats did with popular support, not a minority position coerced by activists. It seems like I no longer understand that.)
In fact, we learned something from Kamala Harris’ interview on Fox News. Let’s talk about the Texas Senate race. This content is only available to Slate Plus members The New York Times should go to jail for these Trump-Harris headlines Went to see Gwen Walz on the campaign trail in Pennsylvania. What I saw was telling.
In summary, voters generally support inclusion, humane treatment, and “order,” which party is in charge and to what extent migrant tent encampments and other symbols of disorder. They tend to change their position on which is more important depending on the situation. You see it where they live and on the news. If you ask them, a majority of voters support deporting illegal immigrants and offering them a path to citizenship. Perhaps this is a case of the same bone-jarring median voter brain that supports lower taxes, higher spending, and a balanced federal budget. Or maybe it’s just an interest in seeing someone do something about an issue that has become particularly salient, an interest in knowing that things are being handled in some sort of organized way. yeah.
In any case, it does not suggest a national verdict so clear that the Democratic Party should abandon its sense that it represents an evolving multiracial democracy, perhaps its most enduring asset since the civil rights era. do not have. Many American voters are so inclined, and they have already shown that they can form the basis of a winning coalition. Call me an idealist, but I also don’t think all of these voters are simply engaged in progressive virtue signaling. Maybe they’re just saying that illegal immigrants should be given a chance to work toward citizenship, or that it’s a good idea to have a black woman on the Supreme Court at least once every 235 years. do not have. Because they think that’s the way America is. And shouldn’t they have a party too?
