Josh Marshall provides a succinct guide to understate a couple of key points on today's anti-immigrant hate-mongering agenda, with particular reference to the United States (Please Bookmark This Post. Seriously.TPM 06/25/2018). There's the "open borders" accusation the Republicans make against the Democrats:
... in 2013 the Senate passed the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act, the most recent iteration of so-called ‘comprehensive immigration reform.’ ... it included a huge amount of money and laws for border security and efforts to prevent illegal immigration. It is demonstrably not an ‘open borders’ bill. All 52 Democratic Senators voted for it as did the two independents who caucus with the Democrats. This is the clearest, most concrete and dispositve [sic] evidence that this repeated claim by Trump, Sanders et al. is a provable lie. [my emphasis]
Then there's the scare talk about immigrant criminals:
The evidence is consistent and overwhelming. Immigrants commit crime at dramatically lower rates than the native born. And large influxes of immigrants actually appear to bring the crime rate down in areas of high concentration. Immigration does not drive up crime rates at all. If crime is our guide we should bring in more undocumented immigrants and boot some native scofflaws. The entire premise of Trump’s immigration arguments are based on a demonstrable lie. [my emphasis in bold]
One might be tempted to think this incompetence is a blessing in disguise, considering Trump's authoritarian impulses. But as we've seen with the travel ban and the manufactured border crisis, his incompetence is no protection against cruelty and inhumanity. An unfit president is no less powerful.
The good news for Republicans is that when all is said and done, this train-wreck of a presidency will be repurposed as yet another example of how government can't do anything right. They'll tell us that the only solution for that problem is another round of tax cuts, the cure for whatever ails you. It's quite a racket.
That's an updated-for-the-Trump-Age version of the old Democratic saying, now more accurate than ever: Republicans run on the idea that government can't do anything right, then they get elected and prove it.
The story [from Susan Glasser] goes on to handwring about how this [kidnapping immigrant children] is the one wedge issue that really works for Trump and how dangerous it is for Democrats to stray from their positive message of health care and the minimum wage. The implication is that talking about Trump's incompetence and malevolence will just make his voters love him so we need to complain about the Republicans trying to repeal Obamacare and pretend it's 2008 and say "yes we can!" (Don't say si se puede, though. That might rile up the Trumpies and we need to keep them as happy as possible at all times.)
Trying to appease these people and motivate the Democratic base by re-running their old campaigns and presenting a sunny vision of America is delusional. Republicans can't be appeased by Democrats because they are completely delirious that their Dear Leader is holding a national hatefest. That's what makes them happy. Meanwhile, Democratic voters will think these Democratic politicians are as depraved as Trump if they don't describe this grotesque insanity for what it is.
Pretending that what is happening isn't happening will simply not work. Trump is going to spend the next few months doing what he always does: spew racist to thrill his racist base. The only thing Democrats can do is get their own base out and acting like a bunch of cynical cowards isn't going to get the job done. [my emphasis]
