Two Issues to Care About for 2024
It seems to me that there are two issues that Democrats have got to get serious about before the election.
First of all we should recognize that the issue of Biden’s age is not going to disappear. People are not crazy — Biden is old enough to make the VP an issue, and Kamala Harris is not currently a strong figure. So there is something to worry about.
There is no viable alternative to Biden as President. But we can certainly do a better job of promoting Harris and giving her opportunities to shine. Or alternatively it is not impossible to change VP (with compensation) for someone else, e.g. Karen Bass. I’m not choosing options here. But age is a real issue, and the only way we can respond is by strengthening the VP.
The second real issue we are avoiding is immigration. Part of the problem is that there is genuine disagreement among different wings of the party, but the real issue is that we’re deluding ourselves about what the policy actually is. Despite what we tell ourselves, the current policy is becoming close to open borders-and there is no support for that in the general population.
The problem is asylum. It’s an out-of-control loophole that is being used by an increasing percentage of all the desperate people who want in. It takes time and effort to adjudicate cases, there is a huge and increasing backlog, and the people are inside (and frequently lost) while it’s all going on. Since the people asking for asylum are clearly in desperate straits there is no pleasant way to impose up-front controls, so we are essentially in denial about what is going on. But the issue is right up after Biden’s age, and the statistics support it.
The population supports DACA people, so it’s not that they hate all immigrants. They just recognize that there are so many desperate people at the moment that we can’t just take them all, and it’s getting worse. I’m not proposing a specific solution, but we had better figure out something even if it’s going to be unpleasant. The alternative is not a matter of living with immigrants; it’s living with a majority-supported nationalist regime.
The Zakaria article referenced earlier recommends a total freeze on new asylum applications. That sounds draconian, but a Republican future is worse. Trump, De Santis, and others have been quite gleeful about it: shoot to kill at the border.
Originally published at http://ontheoutside.blog on September 24, 2023.
