Politics means never having to say you’re sorry. When a party turns on its heel and walks away from a policy, it pretends nothing of note is happening and wouldn’t dream of issuing a mea culpa.
Have you noticed how quiet Democrats are about President Donald Trump’s deportation of illegal immigrants? So far, these are mostly hardened criminals, the world’s riff-raff whom the blue party argued for years must be given sanctuary from Trump so they weren’t held to account for their predations on American citizens. But Democrats don’t want to be seen that way anymore, and their foot-shuffling embarrassment while Trump flies undesirables home is part of an effort to execute a U-turn away from what lost them the White House and Capitol Hill in the November election.
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris knew they needed to change course in 2024 to avoid the crushing defeat that their bosses, former President Barack Obama and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), could see hurtling toward them. So, having culpably opened wide the southern border, they suddenly presented themselves as tougher on illegal immigration than the GOP. This ludicrous claim was precariously balanced on Republicans’ rejection, under orders from Trump, of a border bill that was camouflaged to look serious but would actually have facilitated a continued flood of illegal immigrants.
Election results, however, have a way of clarifying matters, and, in a flash of Damascene light, Democrats saw that their policy of facilitating mass illegal immigration is unpopular. It is also utterly immoral, which is another reason why Americans hate it. Citizens of a nation-state must have the right to decide who they let into their country to live with them.
Democrats are in a quandary. Their muscle memory, which was developed over decades, is to support anything that works against America. This has been reinforced in recent years by an instinct to reverse everything advocated by Trump. But they don’t want the orange man to get all the credit for restoring national sovereignty. They want voters to see them as protecting America, too.