Death on the Hill
Now we know. Republicans in Congress don’t care about securing the border. They just want it as an issue to talk about and run on. Two weeks ago, the bipartisan Senate team working on immigration legislation (the border bill) made public what they had agreed to. Within minutes of it being introduced, Republicans in Congress began trashing it. Within a few hours, it was clear it stood no chance in hell of passing.
While it wasn’t surprising that the border bill died, the speed with which it was killed had to have set a record. Even Republicans previously supportive of it abandoned it once they saw the writing on the wall. I had long believed that Republicans in Congress just wanted the border as something they could complain about. Prior to February 4, that was speculation, but now it’s been proven true beyond any shadow of a doubt.
It’s no surprise that Trump came out against it. He never cared about the border in the first place. It’s no surprise either that the TV, radio and internet entertainers were against it. They are in the business of riling people up to boost their ratings, gain viewers/listeners and/or sell more subscriptions. Governing and policymaking is not their thing. The more bipartisan cooperation there is in Congress, the less angry people will be and that’s bad for their bottom line.
Nor am I surprised that the entertainers in Congress opposed it. The Marjorie Taylor Greenes, Chip Roys and Matt Gaetzes of the world are functionally no different from having Tucker Carlson, Ben Shapiro and Laura Ingraham as representatives. They exist to entertain their audience and if that means depriving their party of a major policy victory, that’s perfectly fine. Like the entertainers outside of Congress, governing and policymaking is not their thing.
The only surprising thing is how stupidly honest some Republicans in Congress were about their motives. Some of them were openly saying they didn’t want Biden to have a win in an election year. Others flat out lied about what the bill did, such as saying it allowed 5,000 new immigrants a day to come in.
The House was where the border bill was killed. Mike Johnson declared it dead on arrival within a few hours of it being introduced. Steve Scalise, who is in charge of scheduling votes, said it would never get a vote no matter what happened in the Senate. Right after those announcements, one Republican Senator after another came out against it.
Soon after the border bill died, the Senate passed another bill providing aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan on a bipartisan vote of 70-29. That was what Biden had originally requested back in October. As soon as he requested it, Republicans in Congress said they wouldn’t approve any more aid unless it was passed alongside border security measures. So began the three month long effort to craft the border bill.
I feel bad for the Senators and their staff members who worked long hours on it. They put in a lot of effort only for the plane to get blown up before leaving the hangar. The Republican Senator most involved in the negotiations, James Lankford of Oklahoma, is now being vilified on the right for his efforts. In the future, I suspect any Republican is going to be hesitant to be associated with immigration legislation no matter how favorable it is to their party. That will make passing any legislation on the matter that much harder.
Even though the negotiations didn’t result in anything getting passed, they still had to happen and they have proven to be of some good use. They had to happen because if Democrats refused to agree to them, Republicans would never have approved any aid to Ukraine. That is what Democrats wanted the most. We would be at a standstill now if the border bill had never been on the table. Getting the Senate-passed aid bill through the House will require some real effort, but I think it will ultimately happen. Should it happen, Democrats will wind up getting most of what they wanted in the first place while Republicans will get nothing on the border.
I say the negotiations have proven to be of some good use because they have shown which party is willing to do something about the border. When the negotiations began, there were two big questions. The first was how far Democrats would be willing to go to make a deal. The second was whether Republicans would be willing to take yes for an answer. The answer to the first question is much further than most anyone thought. The answer to the second question is a resounding no.
Democrats like to govern, Republicans like to entertain
From a policy standpoint, I don’t know how I feel about the border bill dying. It did some things that were necessary, such as hiring more border patrol agents and providing lawyers to unaccompanied minors. It also tried to speed up the process of deciding asylum claims, which has been a big contributor to the backlog over the last few years. Had I been in Congress, I would have supported it, but mainly for political reasons, i.e., reducing the issue’s political potency. If I could write my own immigration bill, it would include some of the border bill’s provisions, but it would include many non-enforcement measures, too.
The Republicans who genuinely care about immigration policy and favor tougher border measures should be blood boiling mad. Their party was given the most generous terms imaginable and was allowed to dictate what kind of bill would be produced and then immediately said no. The Republicans in Congress who did that all deserve gold, silver and bronze medals in the malpractice Olympics.
Even the Wall Street Journal editorial page was in favor of the border bill. They recognized that Republicans were looking a gift horse in the mouth by not taking it. They argued, accurately, that it was heavily one-sided in Republicans’ favor and included things they could only have dreamed of getting just a short while ago. During Trump’s time in office, there was never anything proposed that was nearly as restrictive as the border bill was.
The only reason so many Democrats in Congress were willing to support an enforcement-only border bill was because they saw the border as an electoral liability and wanted to defuse it. No matter who wins in November, that incentive will be gone. A large majority of congressional Democrats are from reliably blue places. They will have no reason to cooperate with Trump if he wins. If Biden wins, he won’t have to worry about being reelected again and won’t feel the same urgency to address the issue. If he does address it in the future, the terms he will put forth will be much less favorable to Republicans than what they just rejected.
For the entertainment wing of the Republican Party, which is by far the biggest and most influential part, none of that matters. That crowd now includes a large majority of Republicans in Congress. They don’t care about the border or any substantive issue. If Republicans lose every policy battle until the end of time, that’s fine with them.
They exist to start fires, pour fuel on them, make impossible demands of those trying to put out the fires and then complain to their audience about being betrayed when their demands aren’t met. Putting on a show isn’t a means to an end. It’s not even an end. It’s the end.
I frequently emphasize how different the two parties are and the events of the last two weeks are one more stark illustration of that. The Democratic Party is hardly flawless, but it is a serious party that cares about governing and policymaking. That includes being willing to make major concessions on issues they wouldn’t otherwise make so they can accomplish bigger things. Democratic primary voters care more about winning than fighting and are willing to back centrist or even somewhat conservative candidates in primaries if that is necessary.
The Republican Party could not be more different. It’s a clown car full of grifters and entertainers with Kim Jong Trump in the driver’s seat. I have said before that the Republican Party is little more than a large scale version of Jonestown. After the rejection of the border bill, I think that characterization is too generous. The Republican Party is nothing more than a large scale version of Jonestown. It has no interest in governing and policymaking whatsoever and doesn’t even care that much about winning. Republican primary voters, usually encouraged by Trump, would rather nominate crazies who lose than sane people who win.
From a political/electoral standpoint, the death of the border bill has been very good for Democrats. Biden and congressional Democrats proved that they are willing to address the issue in good faith and make significant concessions. This piece in The New York Times gives a great rundown of the last three months and the thinking behind Chuck Schumer’s strategy in dealing with the issue.
By agreeing to tougher border restrictions, congressional Democrats called congressional Republicans’ bluff. By rejecting the offer, the latter proved that they were not arguing in good faith and would never agree to anything. They want the border as an issue to run on and have no interest in addressing it. By agreeing to the border bill and Republicans immediately killing it, Democrats have gotten the best of both worlds. They not only proved that they are taking concerns about the border seriously, but they did so without having to enact any of what they grudgingly agreed to.
The last three months reflect very well on both Biden and congressional Democrats. They recognized that the border is a liability for them. They needed to show that they take it seriously and are willing to address it and they did. That’s what a competent, well-functioning party does.
What a competent, well-functioning party doesn’t do is what Republicans in Congress did. When a party is offered generous terms by the other party on something its members claim to care deeply about, it’s a manna from heaven. A competent, well-functioning party recognizes that a president from the other party endorsing their preferred legislation is the most effective and pain-free way to get it enacted.
A Democratic president endorsing Republican-backed legislation gives it cover it would not otherwise have and vice-versa. In the case of the border bill, by endorsing it, Biden pressured Democrats in Congress to support it and a large majority of them did. That made it much more likely that it would have not only passed, but would have enjoyed widespread public support.
Passing legislation on a party-line vote can be tough. If it’s on a matter that tends to inflame passions, such as the border, it can produce a big backlash at the ballot box. Had the border bill been passed with bipartisan support, there likely would have been no backlash at all. In the future, if Republicans try to do anything on the border by themselves, they won’t be spared from that and they will have nobody but themselves to blame.
It would be overstating things to say Democrats have now made the border into an asset. Democrats are the party in the White House and people are unhappy with what is happening there. Regardless of what is done or not done, that still remains the case. While Democrats won’t be likely to have the border as an asset, if they can reduce their disadvantage on it or even fight to a draw it will be a big win. We may already be seeing signs of that.
A case study for November?
For what it’s worth, there was a special election on Tuesday for a House seat located mostly in Long Island where the Democrat won and the border was a big issue. I would be hesitant to read anything significant into it because special elections are just that. Still, as a political junkie, I can’t resist talking about it.
New York City has recently seen a big influx of migrants. It has strained all kinds of services there and has been a rallying cry for Republicans. Long Island in particular has been very good for Republicans since 2020. It was one of the very few things they had to celebrate in the 2022 midterms.
With that backdrop, it was no surprise that the border was a hot button issue. The Democrat supported the border bill while the Republican opposed it. The Democrat was vocal in criticizing his party on immigration, acknowledging that they had erred and needed to clamp down on border crossings. He even took some hardline positions like demanding a temporary shutdown of the border. In the end, he won by eight points, the same margin Biden won the district by in 2020.
It’s not shocking that the Democrat won, but the margin was expected to be close and the Republican was thought to have had a solid chance of winning. Unsurprisingly, Democrats are thrilled about the result while Republicans are downplaying it. The most immediate impact of it will be the Republicans’ very small majority in the House getting even smaller.
As far as what kind of impact that will have on passing anything goes, it makes the Republicans’ job harder. For Democrats, it strengthens their hand since Republicans can only afford three defections when trying to pass things on a party-line vote. That will be a problem for them because of inevitable absences for various reasons, i.e., weather, illness, personal matters, etc.
With respect to November, Democrats now only need to gain four House seats to win back the majority. That’s not guaranteed to happen, but is certainly doable. It’s hard to say how much of what worked in the special election will translate to other districts. Most places haven’t seen a large influx of migrants so that issue may not pack as much of a punch (good for Democrats). The Democrat was also very well-known and had been in various elected offices there for decades, which probably won’t be true for other Democratic candidates (good for Republicans).
What made the special election even more special is the reason it was happening in the first place. The seat was previously held by George Santos. He made history in December by becoming only the sixth member of the House to be expelled. When special elections are held in districts where the incumbent left because of a scandal, their party tends to get penalized for it. That alone likely gave Democrats a significant boost given how high profile Santos’ scandals were.
My hope is that Democrats will talk about the border by going on offense. Every Democrat in a competitive race should mention the border bill as something they support and talk about what was in it. Odds are their Republican opponents were against it. They can rightfully be called out for being all talk.
Let’s not get too excited. Very few voters pay attention to anything happening in Congress. Normal people have probably heard nothing about the border bill or how it died. Changing that will require sustained messaging, but I doubt it will break through to most people.
Perceptions of both parties are deeply held and have been built up over many decades. The best messaging in the world won’t change that overnight. There are certain issues where Democrats have long held advantages such as healthcare and Social Security and certain issues where Republicans have long held advantages such as law enforcement and national security. Those perceptions persist regardless of the reality of any of those issues.
Many of those who get paid to talk and write about politics don’t get that or refuse to. I’ve read countless pieces and heard countless takes about how Democrats/Republicans could solve their problems with the right messaging. 99 times out of 100 it’s the same messaging the person advocating for it likes anyway. Contrary to popular belief, messaging isn’t like a light switch that you flip on and all your problems are fixed. It’s more like building a house. It can be done, but it’s arduous, takes time and can face all kinds of setbacks.
Convincing people that Republicans don’t really care about the border will take a long time if it ever is successful. This election cycle will be ancient history by the time the success or failure of that effort is apparent. That’s why even though I think Democrats should talk about the border, they should only do what is absolutely necessary and quickly pivot to talking about things they’re stronger on. For each minute they spend talking about the border, they should spend an hour talking about abortion.