The “immigration reform” bill
Feb. 5th, 2024 06:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
solarbirdA news item: Senate Republicans are turning on their own “bipartisan”-at-the-barrel-of-a-gun immigration plan.
If this turns out to have been Biden playing rope-a-dope I am genuinely going to be so fucking impressed, ’cause it’s playing out like some truly epic rope-a-dope, and I’m not saying that’s what it is…
…but that’s how it’s playing out so far.
A couple of weeks ago I was all, “I hate this, but we have to save Ukraine from Russia and we can fix it later. If this is the cost to keep the post-war consensus that wars of conquest are forbidden going, then as far as I’m concerned, it’s worth it. As much as it sucks, I’d make this trade.”
And I stand by that because wars of conquest being just fine – as per pre-World-War-II – was an unending nightmare of suffering for almost everyone.
But last week, I started going, “…wait,” because of how the deal was falling out. And I started thinking…
“…is this Biden and the Democrats playing rope-a-dope?”
If it turns out the plan was to lead the MAGATs into voting down their own proposals, that’s some finest grade Dark Brandon shit right there.
I really kinda hope it is. It would be beautiful.
Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.
no subject
Date: 2024-02-06 06:05 am (UTC)Consider how this round plays out on the Democratic side of the ring:
1. Dems compromise with Republicans on a border security bill.
2. The center and left wings of the Democratic party don't like the tough-on-immigrants measures in the bill and lose faith in their leaders.
3. The bill fails because Republicans abandon it, so the Democrats are left without support for Ukraine and alienating part of their base.
Meanwhile from the Republican side:
1. Republicans talk down the bill (which THEY helped negotiate) as not tough enough.
2. Right wing echo chamber media repeat all the spin and lies uncritically.
3. Republican voters cheer their leaders for standing up to the awful Dems who are still trying to ruin America.
no subject
Date: 2024-02-06 06:16 am (UTC)Don't get me wrong, it'd be nice if they did, but they really don't. Not in a way that matters.
The left does care - the actual left, the 5% left - but not compared to the nightmare in Gaza. So from that standpoint, it's also noise.
Everything you list about Republicans is going to be true no matter what happens. Literally everything, because it's literally their plan. The problem is still scraping together enough votes in the House to get Ukrainian aid going again despite MAGA (and Trump's and Putin's) wishes. If this goes down, that lets the sane people go all in on "we tried fucking everything, including everything they asked for, and they still said no. Are there even three patriots left in the Republican Party?" on the House.
The problem is that I don't know that there are. If there are, the end result is Ukrainian aid, and we start over on immigration next year, this time, without a Republican house.
Like I said, I don't know this is what's going on. But we'll find out.
no subject
Date: 2024-02-06 10:20 pm (UTC)My seat-of-the-pants sense on immigration reform, from when it was last discussed in good faith years ago, was that way more than than 5% of the electorate cares enough about undocumented people as people to want to make sure the details of any policy reform treat them properly as people.
If polling today shows that we're now a 5% minority, or if it just seems that way because of how everyone talks, it's because the right's dishonest tactics work. Repeating untruths constantly doesn't just work on people who want to believe the bullshit, it works on almost everyone. Psychology studies on casual peer pressure show that most people's perceptions buckle under the weight of even an obvious lie being repeated.
That effectiveness, BTW, also means there's not going to be a Dem "Told you so!" moment exposing the right as politically vacant. Too many on the left will be swayed by the right's bullshit and portrayal of this as yet-another instance of weak Dems with weak policy ideas.
The effectiveness of the right's constant lying is why I see Biden and other Dems being the saps, not the champs, of almost every political rope-a-dope. They haven't figured out how to fight back in this new political era. They're still politicking like it's 1992. Wake up, guys and gals. Wake up or let someone born in the last 60 years take over.
[Edit: moved reply into thread]
no subject
Date: 2024-02-09 10:35 am (UTC)By "don't care" let me modify it a bit: don't care enough to vote differently or not vote. Sure, more people care, but only so much. Also I think the total number of caring about that is way lower than it used to be, that it's been swamped by everything else. And also, independents and low-information voters (which are almost all of them) falls for the endlessly-repeated lies just... all the time. Continually. That's one of the things the Republicans really figured out a while ago, so the most caring about this from independents (via polling I've seen in the last month but can't point you at, sorry) is overwhelmingly on the We've Got To Get Control Of The Border side the Republicans have made up.