John Edgar Slow Horses
Diamond Member
- Apr 11, 2023
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How is Kamala Harris getting away with this?
© Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images
Since Vice President Kamala Harris’s ascension to the top of the Democratic ticket, a careful truce has settled in place between centrist, liberal, and progressive Democrats.
No loud or public spats among elected Democrats or Democratic voters over Harris’s candidacy or campaign have made headlines, save for some premature skepticism by online progressives over Harris’s vice presidential selection; Harris has nearly universal favorability among her fellow partisans. The Democratic National Convention (DNC) did not succumb to the kind of chaos and division that was anxiously predicted when Biden was the presumptive nominee; in fact, Democrats are showing heretofore unseen levels of being in array.
Perhaps no issue is more emblematic of this party unity than the thorny topic Democrats have long hoped to avoid: the politics of immigration and the southern border. At the DNC last week, Harris and the speakers who addressed the nation made clear that the Democratic Party of 2024 is moving right, toward the political center, when it comes to how they talk about immigrants, migration, and security at the southern border. While humanitarianism, openness to migrants, and rolling back restrictive Trump-era policies used to be the Democratic focus, Democrats are locked in on stopping the flow of migrants, limiting asylum, and funding more Border Patrol operations.
That’s partially out of a need to appeal to moderate, swing, and independent voters in the various battleground states that will decide the 2024 election. But it’s also a recognition of the very different national environment Democrats are operating in. American adults of all stripes have turned much more negative in their thinking about immigration and border security. The days of talking up a humanitarian approach to immigration, of expanding opportunities for asylum seekers, and racing to outflank other Democrats from the left, are gone.
