945: Frank Talk on Immigration

Hands down on extreme policies

The New York Times reported yesterday on Democrats’ internal tensions amid Trump’s harsh immigration moves. In one respect, it’s the same old story: the party is split between “progressive activists” warning against any accommodation to MAGA and swing-district Democrats trying to assure voters they’re serious about border security.

But it opens by recalling a stunning visual from a 2020 presidential primary debate, when the party split was more like a lonesome voice:

The Democrats onstage saw themselves as morally courageous. American voters, it turned out, saw a group of politicians hopelessly out of touch. Standing side by side at a primary debate in June 2019, 10 of the party’s candidates for president were asked to raise their hand if they wanted to decriminalize illegal border crossings.

Only one of them held still.

Six years later, the party remains haunted by that tableau.

Haunted is the right word, given where we are now.

I’ll save you the suspense: the one candidate who did not raise his hand was Michael Bennet.

But the image is still worth reviewing, if only for how viscerally you can feel the awkwardness of 2020. The candidates uncomfortably raising their hands for anything that would appease the online left: Biden meekly holding his hand directly in front of him at chest level; Hickenlooper barely raising his right hand perpendicular to his body.

You can check out the whole NYT piece here. But the actual must-read is from Frank Sharry, in a new piece in the journal Democracy structured as a debate (which is great - we need more structured debates!)

Frank opens with a reality check:

The Democratic Party used to be united in favor of a balanced approach that combined order at the border with generous legal pathways. Democrats used to dominate public opinion, with three-quarters of the American people supporting their proposals to overhaul the nation’s broken immigration system. Democratic candidates used to lean in and prevail over the populist right.

In 2024, though, the party took a pounding on immigration. According to election polling conducted by Navigator Research, a progressive public opinion project, immigration/border security was Donald Trump’s best issue—and Kamala Harris’s worst. The 20 percent gap among all voters grew to 42 percent among swing voters.

Frank argues that Democrats can build a winning immigration strategy grounded in both moral clarity and policy effectiveness. He has deep credibility, having spent decades working on bipartisan reform. He co-authored a major piece in The Atlantic earlier this year with Cecilia Muñoz, Obama’s former domestic policy chief. That piece described a “third way” on immigration, combining legal pathways and border management, that is both effective and popular.

For more on that, check out “Across The Atlantic.”

In his new piece, Frank points to real-world results from the last Democratic administration: from December 2023 to August 2024, illegal border crossings dropped 77%, and targeted legal immigration programs reduced illicit migration from key countries by 91%.

The political problem, though, is that voters don’t know it. As the NYT notes, fear still outpaces facts, and Trump’s blunt message still cuts through more clearly than anything Democrats are saying in response. Even some of Biden’s best moves, like cracking down on criminal cartels while expanding legal entry, haven’t registered with persuadable voters.

Frank’s advice is to own the success, and talk about immigration the same way Democrats talk about jobs or health care: as a solvable policy issue where Democratic leadership is delivering.

Don’t run from the issue, run on the results.

And talk like Frank!

Activists on the right lean toward “Keep ’em all out and kick ’em all out.” Advocates on the left lean toward “Let ’em all in and let ’em all stay.” But neither side speaks to or for most voters. The vast majority of Americans support immigration but want it to be properly regulated. They want to encourage legal immigration and discourage illegal immigration. They want control and compassion. And while media-sponsored polls suggest a majority of Americans favor deporting immigrants who are here illegally, surveys that compel voters to choose reveal that voters strongly support the legalization of undocumented immigrants over mass deportation.

If Democrats want to defuse immigration as a political liability, they need three things: policies that work, messaging that reaches persuadable voters, and the courage to lead from the center instead of timidly raising their hands in fear of The Groups.

As Sharry and Muñoz wrote earlier this year: “It is possible to believe in both order and justice. Democrats should say so—and prove it.”

945 days until the first Democratic presidential primary, where we need leaders who speak frankly and have the self-control of Michael Bennet.