Can a Party that Botched Immigration and Seldom Speaks with a Unified Voice Defeat MAGA?

Can a Party that Botched Immigration and Seldom Speaks with a Unified Voice Defeat MAGA?

“When you have the most Latino district in the country outside of Puerto Rico vote for Trump, that should be a wake-up call for the Democratic Party… This is a Democratic district that’s been blue for over a century.” 

 Representative Vicente Gonzalez of Texas, who saw Mr. Trump win every county in his district along the border with Mexico.

Keeping in mind that the majority of Trump’s MAGA followers are not issue oriented; they will do whatever their strongman directs and believe anything he says even if proven false. They delight in the decimation of the federal bureaucracy (their view of the demon “deep state”), even if it crashes to the ground and they lose vital benefits that most of them depend on. Efforts to win them back needs to be the result of efforts to recapture or solidify liberals and moderates who are open to change… not addressing MAGA diehards on their own terms.

And here is the “Democratic BIG INTERNAL SQUABBLE”: A strong “progressive” surge may indeed redefine the Democratic Party over the long haul, but they cannot begin to protect the LGBTQ if they are not in power. For younger voters, “socialism” is a viable economic strategy; for middle-aged and older voters, it represents a betrayal of the political dogma they were raised to fight. Focus instead on the younger male, working class and Hispanic voters the Dems have lost in recent elections. And more than a few issues that non-MAGA voters care about.

Trump’s unfounded belief that tariffs are paid by the nations they are assessed against assures a continued unstable and declining economy. There’s never been a tariff paid by the country the tariff is assessed against. Tariffs are a regressive tax – most negatively impactful against those who spend most of their money on buying “stuff” versus investing and controlling big assets… hence the lower and middle classes versus the rich. Tariffs are only paid by the US importers and their ultimate consumers. It is, to put it simply, a sales tax. As long as Trump tries to impose this false economic vector, the economy will sputter, rising and falling on “news,” as TACO Trump struggles to make a bad economic plan work. It won’t! Costs were rising and will continue to rise.

Hammer home that “businessman Trump” is no longer the go-to “economic guardian” for us all. Explode that myth, which Americans will encounter in their daily lives. AFFORDABILITY is the underlying issue. So is the LOSS OF UPWARD MOBILITY, as the benefits of living in America are transferred to the rich and paid for by the rest of us. Today, most younger Americans do not expect to live better than their parents; in fact, they expect a life of less.

Not only is Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill as disaster for 80% of Americans – carefully designed to have those Medicaid-slashers delayed until after the midterms and to have the mini-tax benefits to middle income taxpayer expire on their own (as the big cuts for the rich become permanent) – there is an overall vector of cutting public benefits and safety measures, shifting costs to underfunded states, all to benefit the richest in the land. Republicans rely heavily on “trickle-down” economics to justify the big tax cuts – “that rising tide” myth which has never produced real economic benefits for anyone but the rich. Yet the GOP majority are slowly eliminating the only clear path to upward mobility – education – by attacking our best colleges, sticking graduates with unsustainable debt and underfunding education from primary school to graduate education. Anti-“woke” policies have long since replaced hard-ass subjects as the focus of too many of our 13,000 separate school districts.

After the WWII with the GI Bill and the post-1957 reemphasis on infrastructure and education (the “Sputnik” reaction), the US economy soared, upward mobility was the rule, and the individual well-being of most Americans reached magnificent heights. If we all want to live better, we must replace the wrongful “a rising tide floats all boats” falsehood with a refocus on providing the best education from the best schools for the least per-student cost for as many Americans who want that staircase to upward mobility. Plus continued INVESTMENT IN INFRASTRUCTURE, particularly alternative energy. Well paid jobs on steroids!

IMMIGRATION has been a massive failure by the Democrats, which kept getting worse over the years. The Republicans loved every moment, fighting immigration reform to keep the issue alive as election-supporting rage… going feeding frenzy crazy as racist zealots (notably senior White House advisor Stephen Miller – as the mastermind – underqualified Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, anti-constitutionalist AG Pam Bondi and stormtrooper and Immigration Tsar Tom Homan) hit the accelerator pedal as Trump began his Project 2025 purge of undocumented aliens the instant he took office in Trump 2.0. It was considered, literally, the GOP Trump card. MAGA followers even believed there were undocumented Haitians eating their pets! But Trump administration overzealous efforts gave power to Dems, over an issue that belonged once solidly to the GOP. No more!

After announcing they would focus on removing convicted criminals first, Trump officials began to alienate Americans with cruelty, masked ICE agents making random stops, ripping workers from the farms and small businesses, pulling long time US documented residents from their productive (tax paying) jobs and businesses, implementing Trump’s personal vendetta against California, as the only state where federal military forces are deployed as de facto police officers, and killing cohesive communities of US citizens mixed with hardworking long-term undocumented workers. Many Americans applauded, but these were mostly MAGA believers.

The Trump administration even coopted the US Supreme Court in a sustained and exceptionally cruel effort to deport, without due process, individuals picked up off the street and airlifted to harsh prisons in countries with which they had no connection. Pretending that once the deportees were in foreign hands, notably El Salvador, and so informing our courts, the Trump administration claimed no jurisdiction to bring them back. What the party does to change its approach to immigration — and to change how voters see Democrats on immigration — may be the most consequential and difficult decision it faces as it searches for a path back to power. Dems must accept that controlling our borders and limiting immigration are simply political facts of life that they must embrace… intelligently. Whether they like it or not.

But the Democrats were handed a huge and POWERFUL CRUELTY ARGUMENT as the Trump administration received an unpleasant report from a July 7th official filing by El Salvador with the United Nations: “Over 200 migrants who were sent to El Salvador's CECOT mega-prison [pictured above] under accusations that they were members of a violent criminal gang are the responsibility of the United States, the government of El Salvador told a United Nations working group: "In this context, the jurisdiction and legal responsibility for these persons lie exclusively with the competent foreign authorities, by virtue of international agreements signed and in accordance with the principles of sovereignty and international cooperation in criminal matters," El Salvador officials said in their report to the U.N.

I’m Peter Dekom, the Dems have the tools to retake the majority in America, but they need to deal with the above issues with a new and unified perspective or accept their second rate status for the foreseeable future… not just “against things Trump” but for tangible steps for a better future.