The editors of the Wall Street Journal remark on the disorder in Los Angeles and Gov. Newsom’s reaction to it:
So much for moving to the political middle in the culture wars. That’s where California Gov. Gavin Newsom appeared to be heading earlier this year after the Democratic defeat in November. But President Trump’s escalation in migrant deportations has put him in a tight spot with progressive Democrats, and on Tuesday the Governor nominated himself as leader of the anti-Trump resistance.
That’s the clear message from his campaign-like remarks ostensibly aimed at Californians but that sounded like a national rallying cry for Democrats.
Here’s the meat of their observations:
The problem for Mr. Newsom, and all Democrats, is that the Biden Administration so botched the border issue that the public for now is giving Mr. Trump the benefit of the doubt to fix the problem. All the more so when the streets of Los Angeles erupt in protests that turn violent and wave Mexican flags, and Democrats are slow to denounce and quell them.
concluding:
Mr. Trump wants to polarize politics around immigration, and it looks like Mr. Newsom is willing to accept the challenge, or take the bait as the Trump White House would put it. The politics of immigration is about to get worse, if that’s possible. But then Mr. Newsom may not care if his resistance catapults him to the Democratic nomination in 2028.
It probably doesn’t help that the mayor of Los Angeles appears to be intent on fighting the last war. The Supreme Court decided during the Obama Administration that enforcing immigration laws was the responsibility of the federal government. Cities, even sanctuary cities, don’t get to have their own immigration laws. How would her rationale have worked out in Little Rock 60 years ago?
Ruy Teixeira laments the missteps he sees Democrats making:
As the riots in Los Angeles developed, one question kept going through my brain: Have Democrats learned anything?
The chaos in Southern California could have been designed in a lab to exploit Democratic weak spots, combining the issues of illegal immigration, crime, and public disorder. Yet their most visible response to the anti-deportation riots in Los Angeles has been to denounce President Trump for sending National Guard troops to quell the riots. The situation, they insist, is under control—or at least it was, until Trump intervened.
This view is not shared by some in charge of actually doing the quelling.
He quotes the LAPD chief’s saying that the police are overwhelmed by the demonstrators and rioters.
He continues:
There might very well be a universe where it makes sense for Democrats—already saddled with a dreadful image on crime and immigration—to train their fire on Trump and the National Guard instead of anti-deportation rioters. However, it is not the universe we currently inhabit.
and
Democrats do not have to cheer on every ICE raid, but they have to be seen to prioritize law and order and not deny the reality on the ground of violent protests.
Missing from their calculus is how popular many of the president’s policies remain. And that’s especially true on the two issues in question on the streets of L.A.: law and order, and illegal immigration.
His conclusion is:
But what’s unfolding in California should make it glaringly obvious that Democrats aren’t yet ready for a real reckoning with the party’s toxic brand on immigration, crime, and public order and the fight with the party’s left that would inevitably produce. Voters are noticing and will penalize the Democrats accordingly.
In his column in the Washington Post David Ignatius has his own lament:
Democrats have gotten the border issue so wrong, for so long, that it amounts to political malpractice. The latest chapter — in which violent protesters could be helping President Donald Trump create a military confrontation he’s almost begging for as a distraction from his other problems — may prove the most dangerous yet.
When I see activists carrying Mexican flags as they challenge ICE raids in Los Angeles this week, I think of two possibilities: These “protesters” are deliberately working to create visuals that will help Trump, or they are well-meaning but unwise dissenters who are inadvertently accomplishing the same goal.
Democrats’ mistake, over more than a decade, has been to behave as though border enforcement doesn’t matter. Pressured by immigrant rights activists, party leaders too often acted as if maintaining a well-controlled border was somehow morally wrong. Again and again, the short-term political interests of Democratic leaders in responding to a strong faction within the party won out over having a policy that could appeal to the country as a whole.
What worries me is the possibility that someone, somewhere makes a stupid mistake that provokes a national response. It could be here in Chicago. It may not be the Trump Administration. The response could be that anyone who even looks Hispanic is deported. It’s happened before here in the United States.
Update
At The Free Press former Washington Post columnist Charles Lane declaims:
The main argument in favor of a new “grand bargain” is reality. Reality is the same factor that has obliged President Trump, grudgingly, to negotiate with trade partners when his tariffs spooked major U.S. companies and global financial markets. There actually are several realities: First, undocumented workers constitute five percent of the entire workforce. They can’t be replaced just like that. Forty percent of the agricultural labor force is undocumented, along with 15 percent of workers in building and grounds cleaning and maintenance.
Second, it is simply not feasible to deport all of the illegal immigrants, as 84 percent of Republicans want to do, but only 41 percent of independents want to do. ICE arrested 2,300 people nationwide on Thursday—the most arrests it has ever made in one day. At that rate, it would take 465 days to add up to the president’s goal of a million deportations by the end of this year. Even that would be a tiny fraction of the estimated number of illegal immigrants in the U.S.
I think we should recall that the last “grand bargain” on immigration failed because Democrats insisted on normalizing the immigration status of the parents of “DREAMers” as well as the DREAMers themselves. In other words Republicans found anything that could be represented as amnesty politically toxic. I’m confident their position is that much more extreme now.
So, what would a grand bargain on immigration look like? Regardless of reality I don’t think such a thing is possible now.
Let me repeat my own view. I think we should have more legal immigration including low-skill workers and a lot less illegal immigration. Regardless of the letter following the name of whoever is president we should enforce our laws as written energetically, regardless of personal preference. I think that eVerify should be fully implemented to facilitate workplace-level enforcement. There should be serious consequences for employers who knowingly hire people in the country illegally.
The 2013 bill passed in the Senate 68-32. It included funding for more fencing, more Border Patrol and a mandatory E-Verify program for employers. It also offered a pathway to citizenship. The House never even voted on it. It’s unclear to me why immigration is solely an issue being botched by Democrats.
I agree that the optics look bad in LA . Even though the Guard wasn’t really needed it might have at least looked good if Newsom had called them as messaging is so important here. It is interesting that even though crime is back near historical lows the Repubs still pretty successfully talk about law and order and people believe them.
Steve
I agree Democrats are playing this hand very poorly.
But the reality is the “Democrats” are mostly a brand, not a coherent entity with the capability for centralized and coordinated policy and organization. It’s a giant collective action problem and few politicians want to stake out a position that will piss off the more activist elements in the coalition.
California is an example of state with a moribund Republican party, whose median Democratic politician is functionally non-enforcement of immigration laws. They will say things like ‘these human beings served their time, and to remove them from this country would be morally wrong.’ When states pass laws preventing anyone from communicating to ICE about when convicts are going to be released, they are operating in opposition to federal law that requires their removal. Their sins have been washed.
I expect there is no consequence for California politicians from this, some of them notably benefit from changing the topic from the fires. The main problem will be if Californian assumptions provide a framework for the next Democratic Presidential primary.
I wonder about the on the pending lawsuits challenging sanctuary laws. The principle of non-commandeering is set against the supremacy clause. At what point does passive aggressive regulations (like requiring employers to notify employees of an ICE inspection) amount to discrimination against federal laws that states don’t like (different standards for ICE than for ATF). The Illinois case has been briefed for over a month and everyone is waiting for the judge’s ruling.
One thing I noticed in the Illinois case was that 23 states joined a friend of the court brief to argue that Illinois and Chicago are engaged in illegal “harboring.” As far as I can tell that is not the government’s position, probably because the definition of those subject to the law does not clearly indicate state or local government, just ‘organizations.’
… including low-skill workers …
I find it amusing that a high tech society requires the number of low-skill workers often quoted. Cotton picking required manual labor until the 1950’s. I assume that it is a coincidence that it coincided with the loss of cheap labor due to the Civil Rights actions of that time.
Since the Industrial Revolution, automation has lead to greater employment. not less. The reason is simple. Automation allows low skilled workers to do tasks that previously required more skilled workers, and that creates a larger available labor pool. This pool consists of low and high skilled workers.
This allows new products to be created. Re-establishing an industrial base does not mean re-establishing the same jobs from previous eras. Many of those products do not exist or there is a substantially lower demand. For example, the demand for rotary phones is mostly non-existent, and the demand for cell phones was non-existent. Furthermore, that demand has morphed to mostly smartphones.
Evolution is not simply an organic phenomenon. It is a phenomenon of all aspects of human existence. Evolution means that eventually the human species will be superceded and potentially become extinct. and the products and services required by that species will evolve, as well.
The more low-skill workers you have and the more reliable the supply the more you’ll need. Not only will we engage in activities that wouldn’t make financial sense otherwise (growing iceberg lettuce) but a disproportionate amount of such true investment as there is will go to activities that use the low-skill workers.
Furthermore, the illegality of a significant cohort of the low-skill workers is a major factor in their desireability. Were they legal they would cost, what, 30% more to hire?
I agree fully. It is ashamed that “the smartest people in the world” do not.
My main concern is organized crime.
Mexican, Central American, Caribbean people are the water that the Cartels swim in. Without the crowd, without the people, they would stand out as clearly as the men in black masks.
They are loved and respected, hated and feared by their countrymen.
Songs are written in their honor, shirts emblazoned with their faces.
If we can’t screen them, they will come, they have come.
When a judge in the U.S. today finds cause to drop charges against one of them, the judge is suspect, has she been threatened? Has he accepted money?
This is not idle speculation. It’s probably happened many times.
If we can’t secure the border until these people we don’t deport are assimilated,
we’re going to see a war of all against all among ethnic groups.
And don’t forget that our enemies are watching, China has an APP titled NewsBreak on which paid writers inflame an ignorant American audience concerning race, crime, politics, the evil rich, whatever stirs them up.
Don’t even care about the Democrats, I’d just suggest that they either lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way.