How Trump Botched Immigration and Gave Democrats a Win

Which Democrats may immediately fumble away.

Democrats do love a good government shutdown—though this time it’s just the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which includes ICE, that would be deprived of funding. Last time around in October, they said the government shutdown was over the price of health care, one of their best-polling issues with voters. That fight fired up their base and may have helped them win big in elections in New Jersey and Virginia.

This time they may shut down the government agency responsible for immigration enforcement, one of their worst-polling issues in recent years. Put this way, the Democrats’ strategy doesn’t seem to make sense.

But it does make sense to Democrats today and for a very simple reason: the Trump administration has managed to take an issue Republicans have dominated for years and turn it into a big loser for the GOP on multiple fronts.

Public approval of Trump’s handling of deportations, and specifically his use of ICE, has plunged precipitously. Trump now polls heavily net negative on the immigration issue, not far off his overall net negative job approval. As Nate Silver points out:

On average, over the course of his term, Trump’s net approval on immigration has been about six points better than his overall rating; it had been his least-bad issue. Now, that gap has mostly evaporated.

To be clear, the public hasn’t completely changed its mind on the issue of illegal immigration. Far from it. There’s still majority support for deporting all illegal immigrants back to their home countries, as shown by recent polls from Cygnal (which was taken after the killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis) and from Marquette University. Significantly, the Marquette poll, which was taken after the killing of Renee Good but before that of Pretti, showed essentially no change in support for deportation from their November poll.

Consistent with this, the Cygnal poll shows majority support for “Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) enforcing federal immigration laws to remove illegal immigrants from the U.S.” And according to a recent Wall Street Journal poll, voters still prefer the Republican party over Democrats when asked who would better handle immigration, and especially border security. This is confirmed by the even more recent Marquette poll, which showed Republicans preferred over Democrats by 18 points on “immigration and border security.”

But that’s the theory. When it comes to the Trump administration’s practice, as instantiated in ICE’s real world activities, voters are strongly negative on the results. Approval of ICE has plunged precipitously. In The New York Times’ latest poll, approval of ICE has sunk to just 36 percent compared with 63 percent disapproval—a net negative approval of a whopping 27 points. Among the critical independent voter group, disapproval has hit a remarkable 70 percent. Even the fringe view that ICE should be abolished is getting a more sympathetic hearing from the public.

As to specific tactics, voters in the poll overwhelmingly feel ICE has gone too far—61 percent versus 26 percent who think they’ve been about right and 11 percent who think the tactics haven’t gone far enough. Other polls have similar results. These views are likely to get even more lopsided in the wake of Pretti’s death.

It wasn’t so long ago that the idea of actively and aggressively resisting immigration enforcement belonged to a small slice of the activist left. That is no longer the case. Thanks to how severely the Trump administration has overplayed its hand, resistance to enforcement has been mainstreamed and receives tacit support even from many who believe the Democrats are not trustworthy on immigration, and who still support the overall goal of cracking down on illegal immigration.

President Trump has staged a master class in snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. It underscores a lesson neither party seems interested in learning. Both have prioritized the wishes of their most intensely devoted voters, who would never vote for the other party anyway, over the priorities of winnable voters who could go either way. They have not operated as institutions geared to construct broad coalitions and win large general-election victories. Instead, they have focused on fan service—satisfying their most partisan and loyal constituencies.

Ironically, America’s 50-50 political divide has made it difficult for either party to break out of this pattern. You might think that two minority parties would each feel pressure to expand their coalitions and construct a majority, but actually, both have behaved as if they were the rightful majorities already. Each finds ways to dismiss the other’s wins as narrow flukes and treat their own as massive triumphs. Indeed, each has responded to close election losses with various forms of denial.

This is sustainable only because elections are so close. Politicians learn big lessons from big losses or big wins, so neither party has learned much in a long time, and neither can grasp that it isn’t popular and could easily lose the next election.

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Breaking this pattern must start by acknowledging a truism: Bigger majorities are possible if and only if the parties seek broader support. That sounds obvious, yet it has eluded America’s leaders for a generation, because it requires seeing beyond our age of deadlock.

This is what the Trump administration has failed to understand. They haven’t broken the pattern; they are trapped in the pattern. They persist in believing that since they won the last election and voters seemed to support them on issues like immigration, they can push the issue as far as they feel like and voters will reward them.

Not true. In this era, voters’ support is always provisional, and they will turn on you in a second if they believe you’ve gone too far. Immigration for the Trump administration has become a perfect example of that dynamic.

No wonder Democrats feel they can charge ahead on shutting down DHS and are, for now, not nervous about the sometimes militant street tactics of their supporters. We shall see if things work out as well as they expect or whether Trump’s recent attempts to rein in ICE overreach manage to somewhat defuse the current backlash. This has included withdrawing his hapless Border Patrol chief Gregory Bovino from Minneapolis and sending in Tom Homan, his more experienced border czar. Homan just announced this Wednesday that he is withdrawing 700 ICE personnel from Minneapolis. And Trump the same day said in an interview with NBC News “I learned that maybe we can use a little bit of a softer touch” (though he quickly added “but you still have to be tough”).

But either way, Trump and ICE have let Democrats back in the game by, of all things, undermining the big Republican advantage on immigration. Can the GOP recover by sticking to a more moderate course? Can Democrats resist the pressure to overreach on their side by caving to the quasi-open borders forces now energized within their party?

The latter is very much an open question. Between their outrage at what ICE has already done and the apparent climbdown of the Trump administration in Minneapolis, these forces are likely to press their perceived advantage. In Civiqs data, 76 percent of all Democrats now support flat-out abolishing ICE; it must be virtually unanimous among the activist set in the party. Reflecting this dynamic, it has become increasingly common for Democratic politicians, particularly those who want or need to court progressives in the party, to express support for ICE abolition. Graham Platner, progressive Democratic candidate for the Senate nomination in Maine, has cheerfully observed that “dismantling ICE is the moderate position.” Perhaps reflecting this sentiment, progressive New York House Democrat Jerry Nadler has upped the ante to armed struggle.

What is really the major problem in this country today is the fascism in our streets. The attacks on American citizens, by masked hoodlums. If you were attacked by a masked person, you might think you were being kidnapped. You’d be justified in shooting the person—to protect yourself.

Sorry Jerry, it’s a little too late to join the Weathermen! Naturally, progressive celebrities (what would we do without them?) have been joining in the ostentatious display of militance. At the Grammys, Billie Eilish felt impelled to say:

Nobody is illegal on stolen land. We need to keep fighting and speaking up. Our voices do matter…fuck ICE!

Thanks for that Billie. However, you might want to consider the wise words of Noah Smith in his recent excellent piece on an actually effective liberal immigration enforcement policy.

“[S]tolen land” rhetoric makes it look as if progressives don’t believe that America is a legitimate country at all. If you don’t think that American citizens have the right to collectively, democratically decide who gets into the country and who doesn’t, you’re telling American voters that their democratic will is illegitimate. And that’s not going to sit well with voters outside of the most progressive circles.

But Eilish got a standing ovation at the Grammys while Smith’s sensible suggestions about how to do deportations effectively and humanely are likely to draw little interest.

Stay tuned. Recent history does not suggest that a durable, coalition-expanding approach is likely from either side. Democrats may very well go farther down the street militance/“abolish ICE” road and do whatever they can to halt any and all deportations, without clarifying in any way how they would actually handle the problem of illegal immigration. If so, expect momentum to swing right back.