David Lyonhart – who until recently runs New York Time “” The leading newsletter, “Al -Sabah” – was trying to understand what Democrats had to do to win the elections again. He is recently Explore this issue Lengthy Times Magazine. The story focuses on Denmark, as the left left party managed to achieve political success at a time when the extreme right extends throughout Europe. Lyonhart attributes this success in a large part to the party’s readiness to follow the policy of restrictions. Denmark’s story is used to explain how and why it is believed that the Democrats have been fighting, and what the party might do to move forward. As he writes, “For left parties around the world, Denmark offers a glimpse of what a different version of the left-more than the working class, is more focused on society and more restricted to immigration.”
I recently spoken on the phone with Leonhart, and he is about to become an editor -in -chief Time “” Opinion, the author of the book “It was our bright future“During our conversation, which was released for length and clarity, we discussed the reason for his belief that the Biden administration stumbled in the migration case, and why was the relatively hard Barack Obama immigration policies not enough to prevent Donald Trump’s rise, and the extent of economic debate on the effects of immigration on wages really to voters.
Among all the issues that Democrats had real control in 2024, do you think immigration is the issue they have done more?
Yes, and I think the second half of that is important. I think Democrats have three really problematic issues. Inflation, which may be the largest, and I think they have some control, but it was limited. Then there was Omar Biden and the idea that he and the people around him, including [Vice-President Kamala] Harris was not particularly sincere in the matter, and they may have some control as well.
Yes, they had some control.
Yes. Then the third is migration. At President Biden’s era, we had the largest migration boom over a short period in American history. The pace was faster than the peak of Elis Island in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. We had eight million net immigrants coming to the country. About five million of them seem to have entered illegally, which is a frequency largely faster than under Trump or Obama. Biden was telling people during the 2020 campaign that he wanted more people to come to the country and then reduce a full set of policies. Almost immediately, immigration increased. What most American voters wanted was not. This was not in particular what low -income voters wanted by racing. He was not popular from the beginning. This happened in a large part of it – not exclusive, but in a large part – because of the policies that enacted it.
Do you think that part of the reason for these policies is that opinion polls were more positive in immigration when the Biden period started?
definitely. But when you look at the actual policies he put in place, there was no reason to believe that it was common. I have read and read a democratic party platform on immigration in the twenty -first century, and you see this radical transformation between 2012 and 2020. In the era of Obama, in 2012, this truly balanced approach. It boasts that the borders are more secure than it was in previous decades. He talks about the deportation of criminals who put our societies at risk. Also, of course, he talks about being a nation of immigrants and needs to provide a path for citizenship for people who do not have documents that follow the law. The dreamer celebrates and all these things.
Then it begins to move in 2016. By 2020, there is no single sentence on the Democratic Party platform on migration that revolves around border security. All deportation signals are mainly negative, and they talk again and again about the idea that we must make it easy for people to enter the country. And if you look at the poll, there is no evidence that this is what the Americans want. It was part of this broader shift to the left of the Democratic Party between 2015 and 2020 to pursue the desires of the wealthy members to a large extent.
in Times Magazine A piece, with regard to the solutions to the Democrats to move forward, write, “There can be an answer that corresponds to the gradual and sustainable values politically. It was not completely different from the answer provided by many Democrats, including Barack Obama, not long ago. It combined a difficult approach to border security and deportation with the celebration of migrants and an effort to expand paths to nationality.” There was a dangerous application for migration. The border crossings were also declining compared to the management of Clinton and George W. Bush. This was followed by the second state of Obama is the election of Donald Trump, who greatly won the presidency over the anti -immigrant intolerance. If Obama is the way to fortify Democrats from these attacks, then why didn’t that work?
This is a really fair question. I think there is an important answer. The first is that even if Obama’s moderation is more popular than Biden’s most extreme position, Obama is still president during a period that gives up immigration rules mostly in this country. When I wrote my book, I spent a lot of time studying the immigration law of 1965. [The law ended decades of bigoted immigration restrictions, which made admission determinations by country of origin.] When Democrats and Republicans acknowledged this law, they repeatedly promised that it would not lead to a significant increase in immigration, and they were wrong. They have made promises that they did not keep, due to the loophole in the law that allowed large numbers of people to attend as family members in the immigrants. In decades that followed, we continued to reduce the American immigration law. There is a new law in 2008 that makes it easier for children to enter the country. There is a judge’s ruling in 2015 that is also easy for children to enter the country.
So I think Obama is building a more popular and moderate tone. But I also believe that there was constant dissatisfaction among many people about migration because we had much higher immigration than what our laws called for, which the politicians promised them. We had during a period when inequality was rising and the income of the working class was the level of living stagnant. People were frustrated. Even if they blamed a lot of immigration, they were right to believe that the government did not hand over the immigration policy that it promised.
Another thing is that I think Barack Obama would have been beaten by Donald Trump if Obama was nominated in 2016. But Obama did not run in 2016; Hillary Clinton did, and she did not talk about migration the way Obama did. I adopted this type of social justice language between the left rather than the language of the working class.
Does this indicate that the discourse, not the facts of politics about the really important immigration?
I think it is both. When you return and read some Obama’s speech in this matter, he wanders a little when you compare it to the Democratic Party today. “Emotions fly on immigration, but I do not know anyone who benefits when the mother is separated from her infant child or a business owner undermining American wages by employing illegal workers,” Obama says. Therefore, I think the speech is offered a lot. I think that the mistake in which you sometimes see the progressive wing of the Democratic Party is not only on immigration but on other topics, that this idea is that the speech is the only thing that matters and that, if the Democratic Party decides somehow to maintain a full set of policies that you cannot often set.
