Hello! Okay so, one, she didn’t say that. The quote was:
“Our administration worked on the most significant border security bill in decades. Some of the most conservative Republicans in Washington, D.C., supported the bill. Even the Border Patrol endorsed it. It was all set to pass, but at the last minute, Trump directed his allies in the Senate to vote it down.”
There’s also a quote that’s a little closer, from this pretty good article about the rally where this all happened:
“Donald Trump does not care about border security — he only cares about himself,” Harris said. “As president, I will bring back the border security bill that Donald Trump killed, and I will sign it into law, and show Donald Trump what real leadership looks like," she said.
So, she’s not claiming she’s tougher on border policy than Trump is, but it is fair to say she is pivoting to a “border security” narrative. In order to explain why she wants to pass a border bill, it is necessary to explain what is actually going on at the border. Because our media is shit, almost no one knows; I suspect she’s pivoting to “border security” as a narrative because she’s being attacked from the right on it, and because something genuinely does need to be done, and she wants to lay the groundwork for making the attempt. But anyway. What is happening is that there are two big problems in immigration in this country:
- There’s a huge backlog of asylum / deportation cases which means people stay in custody in racist and oppressive overcrowded prisons
- We’re rate limiting the people coming into the country (see point #1), which means a lot of asylum seekers who are trying to do it legally wind up waiting for months (maybe years now, IDK) on the other side of the Mexican border, basically just living in a big, dangerous, squalid, crime-ridden open-air field with no facilities for life, and no job, no medical care for anyone no matter how young or old, it’s fuckin dangerous
There’s also a problem that the whole agency in charge of the border police is for the most part made of racist people, but that one is unfixable unless Harris can fire the whole agency en masse and then find 40,000 people who want to be immigration police who are not racist. So, unfixable. The other two problems do have legislative solutions, but the Republicans blocked anything Biden did, even when he tried promising to do some cruel or racist things as a compromise in order to get them to also agree to some badly needed things (mostly, increasing ICE funding so they can at least house the people they have in better conditions, and increasing the number of judges to process cases so people don’t wait for a year before their case is heard).
And, any time a Democrat tries to do anything about any of this, e.g. reducing the rate of people allowed to come across the border, or increasing the number of judges to reduce the backlog, or increasing funding for ICE, everyone on the left as far as I can tell thinks they’re just being cruel on purpose for no reason and gets really mad.
So, OP: What should the Democrats do? You are (edit
angry) attacking them because they are talking about border security and trying to fix this mess. What should their messaging be instead (since you seem angry about this particular messaging, which again, you kind of have a point about “tough on the border” being a callous message in addition to feeding into the false media narrative)? And, what their legislative action?No, no, you’re wrong! The media bias fact checker bot gave it a credibility rating of “high”, so the headline must be right!
/s
And Left-Center!
Amazing how anything left of stormfront is “left” something
At first I was thinking it was a perception issue on my part and I was realizing something. Then it said the AP, Reuters, and the damn Internet Archive were “Center-left”. It’s definitely confused about where “center” is.
Literally Reagan, that pinko commie with his government cheese and immigration amnesty.
?
You wanted to know where they think the center is.
It’s well known centrist, Ronald Reagan.
Can anyone remember the bill that Trump tanked? I tried to look it up but I guess journalists didn’t want to give the name of or number of the bill?
I found HR 815 on one, but that’s a bill that became law, so probably a mistake?
The bill started in the Senate and got killed there, so look for a Senate number. I don’t think it ever made it to the House.
Not angry, just sharing valid news articles that are being brought up by the Right also. Your explanations and defense of Harris are appreciated Mozz.
I had a feeling you wouldn’t have an answer for what her messaging should be / what she should do instead.
Honestly, like I say, I do sort of agree that it’s off-putting and misleading messaging, and that maybe it would be better to make some sort of attempt to communicate what’s actually going on and what the Democrats have been trying to do (since our media seems uninterested in doing that fairly important thing.) But, it is complex. Maybe it is right to just talk “border security”, lean into that, and if people get confused but still vote for her, then whatever it is fine.
But yes it’s a bunch of shit to attack her with headlines that claim she said something she never said. IDK if she will make a genuine attempt to fix the border, but Biden did make that genuine attempt, and you attacked him with precisely the same messaging, so I think it’s fair to call this one bad faith also.
(Edit: Also I see what you meant about “angry”; I went back in fixed it in my message)
I had a feeling you wouldn’t have an answer for what her messaging should be / what she should do instead.
There’s nothing more she could say. This shithole country is too damn conservative already. The rest of the world is leaving us behind.
And you wonder why people don’t take you seriously… 🙄
You don’t think the US is a collapsing empire? Capitalistic hellhole?
They dont mind a capitalist collapsing hellhole as long as it’s run by an imperialist woman
I’m not voting for a Democrat because they are “tougher” on the border. I want better border policy, not shitty draconian Republican or Biden border policy.
Considering Trump killed a bi-partisan border deal because it might make the other side look good, that’s not a surprise.
Yeah this isn’t an arms race you want to get involved with. You’re not gonna win over any Trump voters with this when he can make them swoon by talking about total border shutdowns or hell maybe reviving the old build-a-wall rhetoric.
On the flip side, this might well alienate independent/Dem-leaning people who don’t want this but whose votes you desperately need and have a chance to win over.
Not a good play imo.
Democrats can promise a river of foreign blood, and still lose the “moderate republicans”, because the republicans will promise to double it.
Fascists will always vote for the real thing over diet-fascism.
To be fair, coupled in with this more draconian set of rules was an attempt to actually make the border function normally if you actually read some of the finer details. We have a massive need for more immigration judges which is causing migrants to be in camps longer and leading to more abuse as they and their families wait for rulings. Republicans have made the disfunction part of the process to keep them tortured longer and the new policy would be the first real push in over a decade to fix that. I’d also rather have a hiring wave under a Democrat than a republican. Bush created a nightmare with border patrol by advertising the positions to the public and structuring it as defending America rather than taking care of desperate people and getting them processed.
Yeah, exactly. There was some genuine cruelty in the bill, put in as an attempted compromise with the Republicans so they could get it passed (incl. making it harder to get asylum and easier to kick people out), although nothing even close to the child-stealing horror movie stuff that Trump was getting his kicks out of putting into place. But the majority of the legislation was trying to help – increasing the number of judges so people aren’t waiting in custody for over a year in a terrifyingly racist and overcrowded prison when they didn’t even do anything wrong being a big one.
We don’t actually want this. This is bad. Stop it.
I have good news! She’s not actually doing what the headline says. IDK why the media is so shit when covering this issue but the picture that’s being created (where the choices are “nothing” which is fine or “border security” which means cruelty), is wrong in both respects. See my longer top level comment.
Biden’s current border strategy is killing migrants by forcing them into remote areas of the border. They’ve continued trumps bullshit but no one gives a shit because it isn’t Trump.
As an example for a long time, they were keeping migrants in open air detention camps while not feeding or giving water to these migrants. Volunteers were keeping them alive. This is evil and I do not want it.
Good news, Biden tried to fix that, by giving enough funding to ICE so they would have places to put those people, increasing the number of judges so there wouldn’t be this massive backlog of 3 million asylum cases to be heard (THREE FUCKING MILLION PEOPLE). Bad news, the Republicans killed it, and none of the left supported him on it either because the media doesn’t give a fuck about any of those people in any of those open air detention camps, and so they represented it all wrong, so people thought he was doing cruelty to migrants and opposed his attempt to do anything to fix it. So, nothing happened. They’re still in the camps. And ICE is still racist. Biden can’t fix that either.
It’s a fucking disaster. And now, the left is preemptively shitting on Harris for getting tangentially involved in it, before she’s even had a chance to fuck anything up. Sounds like those people better have their supplies of sunscreen and bottled water in place.
😢😢😢
If “tough” means “focused”, I’m fairly indifferent. Indiscriminately breaking up families and harrassing people because you’re bigoted is not “tough”, it’s just hateful. It serves no real world functional purpose. And that’s the policies of the right. They aren’t tough, because they aren’t results orientated, beyond punishing “them”. I have to assume (hope) Harris is motivated more by real world cost benefit calculations and less by knee jerk stereotypes. Tough could mean fair, if she intends to apply the rules more justly, and less punativatively. If tough means more scrutiny with less prejudice, it sounds more like a better return on investment for border infrastructure.
Words are inaccurate.
It is perfectly possible to be tough on border security without treating people like sub human trash.
You can make a border more difficult to illegally bypass, while also opening the gates to more to ensure that people are documented. Turning potential “illegals” into legal immigrants. This reduces the need to try and get through the border illegally. This is obviously a very basic over view, lacking any kind of thought into policy for supporting them.
Of course, if someone’s definition of tougher on border security is “fuck off, we’re full”, with the border having razor wire and armed guards shooting on sight, then they would disagree with the above.
Why do the democrat leadership always push for right-wing causes, when they aren’t in the Republican Party for a reason?
“Democrat leadership”
Fascinating
The person being nominated is considered the leader of the party. At least it has for as long asbI can remember. Number 2, while I understand she may not have said those exact words, Biden’s border bill is basically a Republican bill that only was killed to make Democrats look bad.
Tightening the amnesty and refugee quotas won’t make it better. Acknowledging that this whole border crisis is manufactured would do more.
Fox and the rest love to lie about how much asylum seekers get paid, bur will never give that money to the people that they promote are missing out.
Finally, moving to the right is normal campaign strategy, but there was no push to the left during the Primary stage. This is just going from center right to more right. Because Biden never was on the left.
Acknowledging that this whole border crisis is manufactured would do more.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1745-9133.12580
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/12/27/immigration-court-backlog-grows/72030952007/
There is absolutely a crisis at the border, just not the one that conservative media has manufactured.
The bill in question gave billions to ICE, CPB, US martials, and others to hire more officers and increase detention capacity.
If the purpose of the bill was to process immigrants so they could legally stay in the country and get jobs with papers and all, they wouldn’t spend billions building cages for the immigrants in the country or shut the border down, making things worse for the ones already stuck outside the border.
The bill in question gave billions to ICE, CPB,
True
US martials
I feel like this part isn’t true. Is this true? Idk, maybe it is.
hire more officers
True
and increase detention capacity
Interesting that you don’t like this
I talked way up at the top of the thread about more details of what’s going on at the border and why the bill is the way that it is. I would ask you the same thing I asked before: What should Biden/Harris do?
I feel like this part isn’t true. Is this true? Idk, maybe it is.
I linked the bill, page 64
64 SEN. APPRO.
1UNITED STATES MARSHALS SERVICE
2FEDERAL PRISONER DETENTION For an additional amount for ‘‘United States Mar-
3shals Service—Federal Prisoner Detention’’,
4$210,000,000, to remain available until expended, for de-
5tention costs due to enforcement activities along the south-
6ern and northern borders
What should Biden/Harris do?
If you find yourself in control of the machine that crushes orphans, your primary concern shouldn’t be making sure it has all the resources it needs to function.
Appoint a head of ICE who will fire every single officer and sell off or destroy every asset. Any remaining budget can be used to process claims and arrange housing/job placement for immigrants.
End all economic warfare and other hostile actions against Caribbean/Central/South American countries. You can’t torpedo Mexico’s economy via NAFTA, and ask why you’re getting a flood of Mexicans, then torpedo Venezuela’s economy via sanctions and ask why you’re getting a flood of Venezuelans, torpedo Nicaragua’s economy via coup, etc.
4$210,000,000, to remain available until expended,
Ah, got it. Fair play.
Appoint a head of ICE who will fire every single officer and sell off or destroy every asset.
He tries, congress and the courts say no because that’s not how that works. (Just as they did for way more reasonable things than this that he tried to order to have happen. That’s the whole thing with Project 2025 is to undo the guard rails that prevent presidents from simply making massive changes to the system on a whim.)
What should he try next?
Do they not tend to move towards the right during election years Mozz?
He’s pointing out that using “Democrat” as an adjective is a weirdly Republican thing to do.
Specifically, when I did some real analysis on the question, less than 10% of lemmy posters who talk about Democrats do it by saying “Democrat” as an adjective, and there’s significant overlap between those posters and the posters that are saying that people shouldn’t support the Democrats (claiming that the Democrats aren’t far left enough to deserve support from the left).
Why is that? IDK, man, it’s a mystery. I can draw a up a little diagram for you; maybe we can figure out the mystery together.
A lot of Americans even get the Democratic/Democrat verbiage wrong so implying they’re not American is… meh?
A lot of conservative Americans, yes, and almost no one else
That’s what makes it so fascinating
Why is dealing with a huge and chaotic influx of migrants a right-wing thing? What would be moving “towards the left” on this issue?
Addressing the causes of the influxes (supporting terrorists/coups any time a south American country elects someone left of hitler) in the long term, and the actual migrants in a humane way by letting asylum seekers into the country until their claims can be addressed as international law requires, and providing job placement and housing all migrants need, instead of throwing them in cages.
…and hiring more judges to do just that, and devoting more funds to do just that, are wrong how?
Except that’s not at all what the bill does, it’s spending billions increasing detention capacity, hiring more ICE agents, border surveillance, and allows the president to close the border entirely.
This is everything the republicans wanted.
No, you don’t get it. Any apparent move to the right is ackshually a move to the left because not Trump. If you disagree, it’s because [veiled accusation that you’re a scary foreigner or a Republican].
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