Kamala Harris gave a truly transformative speech at the Arizona border yesterday, rising to meet the moment with a concise, aspirational, and comprehensive message. Its time to start trusting her.
The one thing I know about politics is that whenever an issue becomes a political football, there will be no more room for objective analysis and rational policy by either party. Things will get worse before they get better -- if they ever do. Until, maybe, someday, the situation is so desperate and a true leader rises who is able to cast the issue in an entirely new light, the ice jam breaks, and the river of history flows again.
Along with Harris, I include you and other key Never Trumpers as true leaders who have risen to this desperate moment we are in. You were there before Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, and many others who are (thankfully) now standing up.
I often ask myself if I would have had the integrity to do what you have done. For example, suppose former Resistance hero Michael Avenatti had been born under the shield of wealth like Trump, or been a shade less reckless and not ended up in jail. Having observed Avenatti carefully, I believe he would have been the Democratic version of Trump in terms of demagoguery, corruption, and potential to become an autocrat. Now, suppose Avenatti had been the Democratic nominee instead of Clinton in 2016, and Jeb Bush had been the Republican nominee instead of Trump. With the Supreme Court in the balance, what choice would I have made? I like to think of myself as a principled person, and try to be one, but ... Hopefully, after a first, disastrous Avenatti term I would have woken up, but I might have kept telling myself how dangerous the GOP candidate was, just like all the Republicans now calling Harris a radical Leftist now.
Which is a long-winded way of saying you're one of my heroes, Mike!
Thank you. You’re very kind. I like to believe that those that are so self reflective about such questions are very likely to be the ones to pass the test when the moment requires moral courage. Thank you for being part of this community 🙏🏼
This is powerful, Mike. Like you, on a personal level I’m very pro-immigration. I’ll never forget when Trump rescinded DACA. I was in a room with friends who are on DACA and had family members in the program. They were huddled in the dark crying and scared while watching the news reports. I was so enraged. Dreamers did everything right and the US Government went back on their word. It’s the moment that turned me from just being informed to actually being involved. I started volunteering on campaigns (shout out to Lauren Underwood), I became a Democratic Party Precinct Committeeperson, knocked doors, wrote endless letters to my local newspapers, and even marched.
It’s difficult but essential to separate border security from immigration reform like you said Mike. They are two separate things. And if we want to win this election to save democracy the country needs to know how strong Harris is on the border.
This obsession my fellow Democrats have gotten with identity politics has caused us to lose voters across the board. Racism is a problem for sure. This idea though that we could make everything about race, ignore class struggle, accuse millions of gettable voters that they’re racist, and not face electoral consequences was always shortsighted. Democrats ended up treating latino voters as foreigners rather than as Americans who also care about wages, cost of living, housing, etc.
As a minority, I know many folks like us wants stronger border security. Some of us felt the numbers of illegals crossing the border is a lot. We even have folks from India, China and many non-South American using the southern border. We totally agree with strong border security while not dehumanizing them.
Your story about your son, Mike, made me think of this story from earlier this week in WaPo about volunteers who go out into the desert searching for migrants who go missing . They care only for the human suffering endured by scared people who are willing to risk their lives in the hope of a future here in the US. Whatever you think about the issue, these volunteers are heroes.
To me, Mike, you are pointing out two very important issues:
1) How immigration, along with gun violence, has become an issue captured by special interests who profit and benefit from failure, and, therefore, ardently resist resolution. This is indeed shameful for everyone who participates.
2) As ugly as all this is, it's the way that political changes work through our culture. President Clinton signed welfare reform into law, marking how the issue had become an American one and not just a partisan hobby horse.
Thanks, Mike. I follow US politics from a long way away. Australia. I have my reasons, mostly work related. I have never understood your migration issue, even though in someways it is a mirror, a much bigger mirror, of ours with refugees. But after reading this column/essay, I feel like I have a much better handle on it now. Again, thanks.
You Aussies know US politics far better than we do. Love questions from Australian followers, they’re always very insightful. Thanks for being part of our community here John 🙏🏼
So thoughtful & well-written. Making distinction between border security & immigration reform - I've heard that somewhere before 😉
Prosecutor Harris can make her case on the law'n'order/anti-crime aspects of border security.
Immigration reform is a tougher issue cuz it's SO MANY issues. When you son made his school trip to the desert, the situation was likely different from the last 7 years or so. My first water drop was a decade ago. If we observed any folks in desert, it was generally men & they didn't want us to see them unless injured or seriously thirsty/starving. Looking for work either temporarily or to get established then send for family.
More recently we meet families, groups of women, even unaccompanied children, and folks from all over the world, not just MX and the Triangle. "Asylum" was rarely a question 10 years ago, now it's the main request. Our humanitarian efforts continue to adapt, but the immigration system hasn't budged in decades. VP Harris can start w/Lankford bill since it does add resources for asylum review. There's way more work needed in congress, but we need to get her elected as step #1.
I liked that VP Harris started her speech with the reminder that the US is a sovereign country with a right to control its borders. She also included not just the southern border, but airports and sea ports as well. But what I really welcomed was her insistence that we don't have to fall for the false dichotomy of security or humanity, we can do both. Those are the corners both parties backed themselves into over the years, republicans only talking about security; dems only talking about humane treatment. It's why nothing has gotten done on either front. The reason problems like the border [and failing infrastructure for that matter] persist for years is because both parties have benefitted from having an issue rather than a solution.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I didn't get the impression from Harris's speech that she was addressing this issue as an appeal to Latino voters, but rather as a serious problem that impacts all voters. She hasn't 'played the race card' when it comes to herself and the historic nature of her run for president, and I didn't hear an appeal to race yesterday either.
She came across as a serious candidate looking for solutions that reach across the divide of our politics. I'd be interested to hear what other people took away from her speech.
Poet William Butler Yeats, in the opening lines of his poem 'The Second Coming', captured the feeling of despair that I and perhaps many of us have been feeling in our bones since 2016. He wrote...
"Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity." - W B Yeats
The line, "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;" in particular has haunted me, because it has felt for a very long time that there was no center anymore; that we had all retreated to our partisan corners; fearful of and angry at the "enemy" we perceive in those on the other side.
But recently, I am noticing that this feeling of despair is receding...slowly being displaced by a light of hope; hope that maybe the "center" is not gone, but instead has been there all along in the spirit and culture of the Latino people. I have our host here, Mike Madrid to thank for bringing this hope into my awareness; but more so, into the awareness of those that pull the levers of power in our body politic; into the awareness of leaders like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
As Mike states in this post, it is time to support and trust Kamala Harris as she carries the torch and lights the way, because this is about much more than the election at hand. This is about rejecting despair and holding in our minds eye a positive future for this country.
Recall reading about an interview Yglesias did with Sanders years ago in which Sanders told him, 'No, I don't favor open borders, you have me mixed up with the Koch Brothers' (both alive at the time).
David Frum has been quite clear about many employers' desire for cheap and tractable labor, noting Red States have been easing child labor laws to take advantage of the high % of under 18s presenting themselves at the border. He sees no question that asylum laws are being gamed at scale. We have plenty of work here.
This is obviously NOT what economic progressives want. They want a labor market favoring workers. They see this as economically, socially, and politically vital.
(Yes, I know economists insist immigration doesn't depress wages. History argues otherwise).
But the toxic rhetoric and performative cruelty(kids in cages)of the Trump Administration, the whole content of its' 'policy', had its' intended effect, Democrats risked associating themselves with it if they ventured onto middle ground. Until this year.
Mike, what’s the political outlook on mandating E-Verify? It was a prominent part of the debate in the 2010s, and some Democrats in the 2020 presidential primaries supported making it mandatory if it were paired with a pathway to citizenship. I know the Chamber of Commerce types don’t like it, and neither do the far-left activists, but it’s probably something that seems like common sense to most voters if phased in gradually along with pathway to citizenship and could be a good opportunity for Harris to show further pragmatism and willingness to defy ideologues and special interests.
Whoa I didn't realize that the Latino shift towards Trump almost cost Biden 2020. I remember that night, how you talked so many of us down when it looked like it was going for Trump. You assured us it was not. Thank you for hiding the ball that night about this Latino shift. Presumably you assessed that while dire, it wasn't so far gone as to tip the EC scale away from Biden. Lots of states very close tho!!
Thank you Mike for hammering on this shift for so long. Don't be discouraged, I hear it in you. Water under bridge. So far, so good. We dodged the bullet in 2020. And it takes a village to save a democracy. We all have our part to play, and your part is pivotal even if unacknowledged by biggy biggs. I feel certain that VP is relying on your freely given public analysis as well as her own gut because clearly she is making the common sense, fact based, poll based moves just as you do. She is meeting Latino voters where they are. So reasonable, so common sense, both of you.
It speaks to your and VP's patriotism, country over party, that both of you are resisting the siren call of the past reliance on "feel good" politics which didn't and don't even represent the feelings of the voters themselves despite access to data showing their actual concern. There has been this projecting on Latino voters in service of reaching a completely different cohort of nonLatino voters who are also projecting on Latino voters. Chicker or egg, who knows. Meanwhile the actual interests of Latino voters are ignored unless on the margin if that happened to serve this feel good project. I'm just ranting now :p sorry
But this weird objectification in service of drawing the progressive nonLatino cohort isn't working anymore because we are rapidly moving toward the minority-majority electorate with Latino native born multi generation Americans leading the way. Biden then VP have abandoned that fantasy projection and are working with reality as you have been advocating for so long!
VP's speech yesterday was outstanding. She wove the trajectory of it so well. She made the argument airtight. You can't deny common sense like she laid out. She had this "tough love" style embodiment of the rule of law. The rules at the border must apply to all. I must say though, her stance on asylum seekers between ports of entry made my heart hurt. Of course a family with children comes to mind. Where will they go if they are turned away? She didn't address that optic. But I trust she will be humane about it. But in the speech she took more of a subtle tough love style approach by not addressing that old school optic. Her proposal about setting up processing centers in countries of origin created an implicit counterpoint to families being turned back between ports of entry.
Generally speaking, her speech was grounded in values that reflected both empathy and common sense at the same time. It was a winner, definitely. Wow she keeps on hitting the target perfectly. She has a great team around her and how this campaign is unfolding makes me think her administration will also be outstanding.
The one thing I know about politics is that whenever an issue becomes a political football, there will be no more room for objective analysis and rational policy by either party. Things will get worse before they get better -- if they ever do. Until, maybe, someday, the situation is so desperate and a true leader rises who is able to cast the issue in an entirely new light, the ice jam breaks, and the river of history flows again.
Along with Harris, I include you and other key Never Trumpers as true leaders who have risen to this desperate moment we are in. You were there before Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, and many others who are (thankfully) now standing up.
I often ask myself if I would have had the integrity to do what you have done. For example, suppose former Resistance hero Michael Avenatti had been born under the shield of wealth like Trump, or been a shade less reckless and not ended up in jail. Having observed Avenatti carefully, I believe he would have been the Democratic version of Trump in terms of demagoguery, corruption, and potential to become an autocrat. Now, suppose Avenatti had been the Democratic nominee instead of Clinton in 2016, and Jeb Bush had been the Republican nominee instead of Trump. With the Supreme Court in the balance, what choice would I have made? I like to think of myself as a principled person, and try to be one, but ... Hopefully, after a first, disastrous Avenatti term I would have woken up, but I might have kept telling myself how dangerous the GOP candidate was, just like all the Republicans now calling Harris a radical Leftist now.
Which is a long-winded way of saying you're one of my heroes, Mike!
Thank you. You’re very kind. I like to believe that those that are so self reflective about such questions are very likely to be the ones to pass the test when the moment requires moral courage. Thank you for being part of this community 🙏🏼
This is powerful, Mike. Like you, on a personal level I’m very pro-immigration. I’ll never forget when Trump rescinded DACA. I was in a room with friends who are on DACA and had family members in the program. They were huddled in the dark crying and scared while watching the news reports. I was so enraged. Dreamers did everything right and the US Government went back on their word. It’s the moment that turned me from just being informed to actually being involved. I started volunteering on campaigns (shout out to Lauren Underwood), I became a Democratic Party Precinct Committeeperson, knocked doors, wrote endless letters to my local newspapers, and even marched.
It’s difficult but essential to separate border security from immigration reform like you said Mike. They are two separate things. And if we want to win this election to save democracy the country needs to know how strong Harris is on the border.
This obsession my fellow Democrats have gotten with identity politics has caused us to lose voters across the board. Racism is a problem for sure. This idea though that we could make everything about race, ignore class struggle, accuse millions of gettable voters that they’re racist, and not face electoral consequences was always shortsighted. Democrats ended up treating latino voters as foreigners rather than as Americans who also care about wages, cost of living, housing, etc.
Great article, Mike.
As a minority, I know many folks like us wants stronger border security. Some of us felt the numbers of illegals crossing the border is a lot. We even have folks from India, China and many non-South American using the southern border. We totally agree with strong border security while not dehumanizing them.
Agreed! It’s the humane treatment that makes all the difference
Your story about your son, Mike, made me think of this story from earlier this week in WaPo about volunteers who go out into the desert searching for migrants who go missing . They care only for the human suffering endured by scared people who are willing to risk their lives in the hope of a future here in the US. Whatever you think about the issue, these volunteers are heroes.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/09/25/desert-heat-arizona-migrants-border/
Thank you for this ❤️
To me, Mike, you are pointing out two very important issues:
1) How immigration, along with gun violence, has become an issue captured by special interests who profit and benefit from failure, and, therefore, ardently resist resolution. This is indeed shameful for everyone who participates.
2) As ugly as all this is, it's the way that political changes work through our culture. President Clinton signed welfare reform into law, marking how the issue had become an American one and not just a partisan hobby horse.
Thanks, Mike. I follow US politics from a long way away. Australia. I have my reasons, mostly work related. I have never understood your migration issue, even though in someways it is a mirror, a much bigger mirror, of ours with refugees. But after reading this column/essay, I feel like I have a much better handle on it now. Again, thanks.
You Aussies know US politics far better than we do. Love questions from Australian followers, they’re always very insightful. Thanks for being part of our community here John 🙏🏼
Mike,
So thoughtful & well-written. Making distinction between border security & immigration reform - I've heard that somewhere before 😉
Prosecutor Harris can make her case on the law'n'order/anti-crime aspects of border security.
Immigration reform is a tougher issue cuz it's SO MANY issues. When you son made his school trip to the desert, the situation was likely different from the last 7 years or so. My first water drop was a decade ago. If we observed any folks in desert, it was generally men & they didn't want us to see them unless injured or seriously thirsty/starving. Looking for work either temporarily or to get established then send for family.
More recently we meet families, groups of women, even unaccompanied children, and folks from all over the world, not just MX and the Triangle. "Asylum" was rarely a question 10 years ago, now it's the main request. Our humanitarian efforts continue to adapt, but the immigration system hasn't budged in decades. VP Harris can start w/Lankford bill since it does add resources for asylum review. There's way more work needed in congress, but we need to get her elected as step #1.
There's better days ahead. Let's all keep going!
Thank you for fighting for the least among us 🙏🏼
it's my honor, brother
Mike, you are SO right that both parties have failed on this.
I liked that VP Harris started her speech with the reminder that the US is a sovereign country with a right to control its borders. She also included not just the southern border, but airports and sea ports as well. But what I really welcomed was her insistence that we don't have to fall for the false dichotomy of security or humanity, we can do both. Those are the corners both parties backed themselves into over the years, republicans only talking about security; dems only talking about humane treatment. It's why nothing has gotten done on either front. The reason problems like the border [and failing infrastructure for that matter] persist for years is because both parties have benefitted from having an issue rather than a solution.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I didn't get the impression from Harris's speech that she was addressing this issue as an appeal to Latino voters, but rather as a serious problem that impacts all voters. She hasn't 'played the race card' when it comes to herself and the historic nature of her run for president, and I didn't hear an appeal to race yesterday either.
She came across as a serious candidate looking for solutions that reach across the divide of our politics. I'd be interested to hear what other people took away from her speech.
Poet William Butler Yeats, in the opening lines of his poem 'The Second Coming', captured the feeling of despair that I and perhaps many of us have been feeling in our bones since 2016. He wrote...
"Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity." - W B Yeats
The line, "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;" in particular has haunted me, because it has felt for a very long time that there was no center anymore; that we had all retreated to our partisan corners; fearful of and angry at the "enemy" we perceive in those on the other side.
But recently, I am noticing that this feeling of despair is receding...slowly being displaced by a light of hope; hope that maybe the "center" is not gone, but instead has been there all along in the spirit and culture of the Latino people. I have our host here, Mike Madrid to thank for bringing this hope into my awareness; but more so, into the awareness of those that pull the levers of power in our body politic; into the awareness of leaders like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
As Mike states in this post, it is time to support and trust Kamala Harris as she carries the torch and lights the way, because this is about much more than the election at hand. This is about rejecting despair and holding in our minds eye a positive future for this country.
Recall reading about an interview Yglesias did with Sanders years ago in which Sanders told him, 'No, I don't favor open borders, you have me mixed up with the Koch Brothers' (both alive at the time).
David Frum has been quite clear about many employers' desire for cheap and tractable labor, noting Red States have been easing child labor laws to take advantage of the high % of under 18s presenting themselves at the border. He sees no question that asylum laws are being gamed at scale. We have plenty of work here.
This is obviously NOT what economic progressives want. They want a labor market favoring workers. They see this as economically, socially, and politically vital.
(Yes, I know economists insist immigration doesn't depress wages. History argues otherwise).
But the toxic rhetoric and performative cruelty(kids in cages)of the Trump Administration, the whole content of its' 'policy', had its' intended effect, Democrats risked associating themselves with it if they ventured onto middle ground. Until this year.
This may be your best article. Your passion, sensitivity and sensibility clearly comes through.
Thank you for your pro bono work and for teaching us
thank you Mike, this is great news and incredibly hopeful.
brilliant analysis, so glad we have you to make sense of stuff we can't.
this makes sense.
Mike, what’s the political outlook on mandating E-Verify? It was a prominent part of the debate in the 2010s, and some Democrats in the 2020 presidential primaries supported making it mandatory if it were paired with a pathway to citizenship. I know the Chamber of Commerce types don’t like it, and neither do the far-left activists, but it’s probably something that seems like common sense to most voters if phased in gradually along with pathway to citizenship and could be a good opportunity for Harris to show further pragmatism and willingness to defy ideologues and special interests.
Whoa I didn't realize that the Latino shift towards Trump almost cost Biden 2020. I remember that night, how you talked so many of us down when it looked like it was going for Trump. You assured us it was not. Thank you for hiding the ball that night about this Latino shift. Presumably you assessed that while dire, it wasn't so far gone as to tip the EC scale away from Biden. Lots of states very close tho!!
Thank you Mike for hammering on this shift for so long. Don't be discouraged, I hear it in you. Water under bridge. So far, so good. We dodged the bullet in 2020. And it takes a village to save a democracy. We all have our part to play, and your part is pivotal even if unacknowledged by biggy biggs. I feel certain that VP is relying on your freely given public analysis as well as her own gut because clearly she is making the common sense, fact based, poll based moves just as you do. She is meeting Latino voters where they are. So reasonable, so common sense, both of you.
It speaks to your and VP's patriotism, country over party, that both of you are resisting the siren call of the past reliance on "feel good" politics which didn't and don't even represent the feelings of the voters themselves despite access to data showing their actual concern. There has been this projecting on Latino voters in service of reaching a completely different cohort of nonLatino voters who are also projecting on Latino voters. Chicker or egg, who knows. Meanwhile the actual interests of Latino voters are ignored unless on the margin if that happened to serve this feel good project. I'm just ranting now :p sorry
But this weird objectification in service of drawing the progressive nonLatino cohort isn't working anymore because we are rapidly moving toward the minority-majority electorate with Latino native born multi generation Americans leading the way. Biden then VP have abandoned that fantasy projection and are working with reality as you have been advocating for so long!
VP's speech yesterday was outstanding. She wove the trajectory of it so well. She made the argument airtight. You can't deny common sense like she laid out. She had this "tough love" style embodiment of the rule of law. The rules at the border must apply to all. I must say though, her stance on asylum seekers between ports of entry made my heart hurt. Of course a family with children comes to mind. Where will they go if they are turned away? She didn't address that optic. But I trust she will be humane about it. But in the speech she took more of a subtle tough love style approach by not addressing that old school optic. Her proposal about setting up processing centers in countries of origin created an implicit counterpoint to families being turned back between ports of entry.
Generally speaking, her speech was grounded in values that reflected both empathy and common sense at the same time. It was a winner, definitely. Wow she keeps on hitting the target perfectly. She has a great team around her and how this campaign is unfolding makes me think her administration will also be outstanding.
Thank you Mike Madrid _/\_