On Wednesday, two GOP Senators, with help from the White House, rolled out a new legal immigration proposal that put emphasis on certain merits to receive a green card. And as the Media Research Center reported later that night, the liberal media were up in arms. But CNN’s Fareed Zakaria took a different approach during his show Global Public Square on Sunday. According to him, the Democrats were the ones “out of touch” with the feelings of many Americans.
He blamed it on the party’s ability to demonize those that simply disagree with their dogma. He recalled the story Pennsylvania Governor Robert Casey, who wanted to add a pro-life stance to the party’s platform in 1992. “He fully understood that the motion would be voted down. But the Democratic Party refused to permit him even to air his views, so great was his heresy,” Zakaria explained as an example.
“That sent a strong signal to working-class Catholic and evangelical voters that if they did not fall in line on this one issue they were no longer welcome in the party,” read Zakaria, from a book by Mark Lilla.
The CNN host cited poll data to prove the point that in 2016 the Democrats lost some support since 2012 based primarily on the issue immigration:
Look at the Democracy Fund's voter survey, done in the wake of the 2016 election. If you compare two groups of voters, those who voted for Barack Obama in 2012 and then Hillary Clinton in 2016 and those who voted for Obama in 2012 and Donald Trump in 2016. The single biggest divergence on policy between these two groups is immigration.
“In other words, there are many Americans who are otherwise sympathetic to Democratic ideas, but on a few key issues, principally immigration think the party is out of touch,” Zakaria added.
According to a Harvard scholar Zakaria was citing, the Democratic Party had a problem reconciling it’s FDR era position of promoting unity and its current hobby of driving cultural wedges between us and calling it individualism.
“Immigration is the perfect issue on which Democrats could demonstrate that they care about national unity and identity,” he said, touting their political ability.
Yet Zakaria also chastised the GOP plan, saying: “To be clear, I think that the bill that the Republicans rolled out this week is bad public policy and mean spirited symbolism.” That’s despite the fact that the proposal was crafted after the immigration systems of Canada and Australia, two counties the left says we need to live like because of their socialized health care and gun control.
Zakaria seemed to beg the Democrats to get themselves together and take the lead on an immigration solution. “Democrats must find a middle path on immigration. They can battle Donald Trump's drastic solutions but still, speak in the language of national unity and identity,” he told them. “The country's motto, after all, is, ‘out of many, one,’ not the other way around.”
Transcript below:
CNN
Fareed Zakaria GPS
August 6, 2017
10:01:39 AM EasternFAREED ZAKARIA: In 1992, Pennsylvania’s Governor Robert Casey, Democrat dedicated to the working class, asked to speak at the national convention in New York City. He wanted to propose a pro-life plank for the party platform. Mostly as a way to affirming his Catholic beliefs. He fully understood that the motion would be voted down. But the Democratic Party refused to permit him even to air his views, so great was his heresy.
In his brief brilliant forthcoming book The Once and Future Liberal, Mark Lilla writes: “That sent a strong signal to working-class Catholic and evangelical voters that if they did not fall in line on this one issue they were no longer welcome in the party.”
I wonder today if Democrats aren't making the same mistake on immigration. To be clear, I think that the bill that the Republicans rolled out this week is bad public policy and mean spirited symbolism. But that’s not the issue.
Lilla acknowledges he is, in fact, a pro-choice absolutist on abortion. But he argues that a national party must build a big tent that accommodates people who dissent from the main party line on a few issues.
In Lilla’s view, there is a larger crisis within American liberalism. The movement has had two very different visions. The first one Franklin Roosevelt’s: A collective national effort to help all people participate in the country’s economic and political life. It’s symbol was two hands shaking, an affirmation of the binding strength of national unity.
The more recent liberal project has been centered on identity, affirming not unity but difference. Nurturing a celebrating not national identities but subnational ones: Women, Hispanics, Native Americans, African-Americans, Asian-Americans.
…
Immigration is the perfect issue on which Democrats could demonstrate that they care about national unity and identity. And that they understand voters for whom this is a core concern.
Look at the Democracy Fund's voter survey, done in the wake of the 2016 election. If you compare two groups of voters, those who voted for Barack Obama in 2012 and then Hillary Clinton in 2016 and those who voted for Obama in 2012 and Donald Trump in 2016. The single biggest divergence on policy between these two groups is immigration.
In other words, there are many Americans who are otherwise sympathetic to Democratic ideas, but on a few key issues, principally immigration think the party is out of touch. And they are right. Consider the facts. Legal immigration in America has expanded dramatically over the last four decades. In 1970, 4.7 percent of the American population was foreign born, today it's 13.4 percent. That's a large shift in a small period of time and it is natural that it has caused some anxiety and the anxiety is about more than just jobs.
In his 2004 book Who are We?, the Harvard scholar Samuel Huntington asserted that America had more than a founding ideology, in had a culture, one that had shaped it powerfully. “Would America be the America it is today if in the 17th and 18th centuries it had been settled not by British Protestants but by French, Spanish or Portuguese Catholics,” Huntington asked. “The answer is no. It would not be America; it would be Quebec, Mexico or Brazil.”
Democrats must find a middle path on immigration. They can battle Donald Trump's drastic solutions but still, speak in the language of national unity and identity. The country's motto after all, is, “out of many, one,” not the other way around.
