Either having open borders is a good public policy or it isn’t.

At least in my simpleminded view people whose job it is to set policy should do so based on what is good for the country.

That’s not how Aaron Blake of the Washington Post sees things, at least from his point of view as a political analyst. For him, it is all about the polling. Democrats could get away with open borders while the Democrat base was OK with it. But now that Democrats don’t care for it, it may be time to change policies.

At least he is open about it; Democrats can harm the country all they want until the polls turn on them. This explains so much of Biden’s policymaking.

Apparently it didn't matter until it started showing up in the polls. Of course, by that time enormous damage had been done. https://t.co/O9yYpxO2bY pic.twitter.com/70NHkq7kuH

— Byron York (@ByronYork) November 21, 2023

Open borders were never good public policy. But as I have argued many times, Democrats were using the policy to harm the Red states where they just assumed the border crossers would accumulate, destroying the budgets and public safety of the deplorables.

But now that a fraction of those 8-10 million border crashers have migrated into Blue states, it’s time to change direction.

Remarkable polling results came out of New York on Monday. Even Democrats in this Siena College poll are saying things that sound somewhat reminiscent of the views of immigration hawks in the GOP:

• Nearly as many New York Democrats said migrants coming to the state over the past 20 years have been a “burden” (35 percent) as said they have been a “benefit” (37 percent).
• 75 percent of New York Democrats said the recent influx of migrants to the state was at least a “somewhat serious” problem. Nearly half (47 percent) said it was a “very serious” problem.
• 53 percent of New York Democrats agreed with the statement that “New Yorkers have already done enough for new migrants and should now work to slow the flow of migrants to New York.” (The alternative was that the state should “accept new migrants and work to assimilate them into New York,” a position with which 41 percent of the Democratic respondents agreed.)

Perhaps I am being a bit unfair to Aaron Blake, who is simply reporting on the politics of the issue. Or, perhaps, I am being kind now to a hometown boy (he used to write for the Star-Tribune, our hometown paper). In either case, the way this issue and so many others are discussed shows how ridiculous our public policy discourse is.

Open borders were a demonstrably bad idea, and as Blake shows the popularity of a border wall was relatively high both before and now after Trump’s presidency, and the only reason why it was controversial with the public was that Democrats hated Trump, and Trump wanted a border wall.

That is a crappy way to make public policy, but it is how politicians roll, and far too many partisans agree. Orange Man Bad was the guiding principle from 2017 to today.

Support for building the border wall was depressed during Trump’s presidency — a victim of his polarization of many issues. And there have been times in the 2000s and early 2010s when around half of Americans supported it. But it’s rare to see multiple polls showing majority support, including as much as 57 percent in the Fox poll.

We’ve begun to see some Democratic leaders raising concerns about immigration. Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker has sharply criticized the federal government’s handling of the issue and has demanded more help for his state. So have the Democratic mayors of Chicago, New York and other large cities.

Some issues are so obvious that it shouldn’t take more negotiation than an arms control treaty to come up with a solution. Flooding the country with illegal aliens is obviously a terrible idea.

But Orange Man Bad.

You can see the attitude dripping throughout this story: this wasn’t a problem until Democrats said it was. Now that a lot of Democrats are paying a price for the policy it suddenly matters.

Is it any wonder that the country is divided?

Democrats have been pursuing obviously damaging policies on so many fronts, but until their fellow Democrats start squawking there isn’t a bit of pushback from the media or anybody except conservative pundits, who can be safely ignored. There isn’t a moment’s hesitation as long as the only victims are Republicans.

Is it any wonder that people are backing Trump? He’s just saying what a lot of people are thinking–the jerks in charge don’t care a bit about what is good for the country.

That is obvious.

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