Democrats to double down on immigration reform if Biden wins

So if the Democrats somehow manage to drag Joe Biden across the finish line and install him as President, a number of liberal senators have been telling reporters that item one on their agenda as soon as Uncle Joe is sworn in is ready to go. Is it a better solution to the government’s handling of the pandemic? Taming the unrest and violence in the streets? Getting everyone safely back to work? Nope. It’s a “pathway to citizenship” for certain illegal aliens. And they’ve even convinced Biden to say that he would send Congress a bill “on day one” to do just that. (The Hill)

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Democrats are vowing to move forward with immigration reform if presumptive nominee Joe Biden is elected president and the party also takes back the Senate in this fall’s elections.

The prospect would set up a bruising battle in Congress next year, one that Democrats shied away from in 2009 and 2010, after Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008 and Democrats expanded their Senate majority and controlled the House.

It also underscores the stakes for the 2020 election. Polls show that Biden has built a lead nationally and in swing states, and Democrats increasingly like their chances of winning back the Senate majority.

As noted in that excerpt, there’s one little catch in this plan. Just winning the White House isn’t enough. The Democrats will have to take back the Senate as well or at least get to a 50-50 tie so Biden’s VP can camp out there permanently to break evenly split votes. And as we’ve discussed here previously, that’s not going to be an easy trick to pull off. No matter how poorly Donald Trump may be polling, the only seat that definitely looks ready to flip from red to blue is Cory Gardner in Colorado. And even there, the Democrats may not have an easy glide path now that their candidate (Hickenlooper) has gotten himself convicted on some ethics charges.

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On top of that, the Democrats are in no way sure to hold on to their seat in Alabama, whether it’s Sessions or Tuberville running for it. A loss there would cancel out their win in Colorado and then they’re starting over from scratch.

But let’s just say that they somehow pull off the hat trick and not only defeat Donald Trump but get 50 seats in the Senate. Is immigration reform really what the country is pining for in the midst of all the chaos of 2020? (And frankly, should we expect 2021 to be that much better? People are already printing up next year’s Bingo cards as we speak.) There should, at least in theory, be some bipartisan options on the table to deal with the virus, the rioting and the rest of the madness. But instead, they’re going to pick one of the most divisive issues on the table to ram through?

Amnesty has never been a winner in public polling, although a path to some sort of permanent resident status for the Dreamers is still rather popular. But a “pathway to citizenship?” I don’t know if they could get 50 votes for that, to say nothing of sixty. Oh, and that’s the other fly in the ointment. In order to ram this debacle through, they will first have to eliminate the legislative filibuster entirely. Not that they won’t do it, of course. But that’s not going to make them much more popular either.

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At any rate, there’s a sneak preview of what you have coming if the Democrats run the table in November. And this makes it even more important to not let that happen.

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