The Democrats' Real Race and Immigration Problems: What's behind Biden's falling poll numbers in communities of color?
NYC Book Event for Immigration Matters on 10/19 + 3 job openings
In this issue:
We riff off the controversy about Democratic strategist David Shor’s claim that Democrats risk defeat because they are pandering to voters of color, arguing instead that the Democrats have an altogether different but grave race and immigration problem.
For all you New Yorkers, there’s a live book event for the launch of the paperback edition of Immigration Matters: Movements, Visions and Strategies for a Progressive Future on Tuesday, October 19th at 7 p.m. at McNally Jackson Seaport (4 Fulton Street). The co-editors and a number of the authors, including Cristina Jimenez, Daniel Altschuler, and Javier Valdés will join. Space is limited, so RSVP now.
Three new job listings, one for an Executive Assistant with the Leadership Center for Democracy and Social Justice and two with Social and Economic Justice leaders group, a Director of Election Integrity and a Director of Learning Communities.
The Democrats’ Real Race and Immigration Problems
Ezra Klein sparked an intense discussion about the best path forward for Democrats with his column about a political operative, “David Shor is Telling Democrats What They Don’t Want to Hear.” Shor’s core argument, dubbed “popularism,” is that Democrats should run on policies that are popular and therefore “that Democrats need to try to avoid talking about race and immigration.”
The problems with Shor’s arguments are mostly well articulated in Klein’s column: Shor doesn’t present data to substantiate his argument (it’s hard to imagine women or people of color getting away with this oracular approach to political analysis); he overestimates the impact of policy positions (compared to identity) in shaping the political preferences of low-information voters; he downplays the importance of enthusiasm and intensity of support in generating turnout; his analysis doesn’t admit of the possibility of changing the “common sense” about an issue, though that’s exactly what social movements that push the envelope do, on issues from equal marriage to criminal justice; and, above all, his advice to avoid talking about race is nonsensical in a world in which right-wing Trumpists are running their whole campaigns on platforms of racism and nativism. Avoiding the topics is not an option. Ian Haney Lopez points out in a Medium post, Shor is Wrong About Racism (which is to say, about electoral politics), that
As the Ezra Klein piece reports, Shor “and those who agree with him argue that Democrats need to try to avoid talking about race and immigration.” This is Shor’s most dangerous piece of advice to Democrats (and gets surprisingly little attention from Klein). For Shor, this has become an article of faith — faith, rather than reason, in the sense that Shor does not substantially engage contrary evidence. . .
In other words, Shor is making the same mistake leaders of the Democratic Party have made for decades: to jump from the insight that attacking racism as a white problem backfires with most voters (true) to the unsupported/seemingly unshakeable article of faith that Democrats should largely stop talking about racism (false).
The GOP has made racial identity the main driver of political polarization since 1970. Democrats have tried to side-step this by emphasizing policy rather than identity . . . ; or to confront it by denouncing white racism. . . . Neither approach will win in 2022. The best evidence calls for a new approach that reframes racism as a tool of division that threatens all racial groups.
Shor’s argument fails a moral test: if racism is the country’s original sin and deepest, festering wound, a prescription for avoiding campaigning or governing to address is surrender disguised as a smart strategy. As The Nation’s Elie Mystal puts it in a brilliant jeremiad, “Democrats Are Ready to Abandon Black Voters Again,”
Black people, our concerns, and our agenda, are always the first ones to be thrown overboard, even when we’re rowing the damn boat… If “swing” voters like racism, [Schor seems to believe] it’s very important that Democrats internalize that racism as one valid option among many. Far from trying to, I don’t know, defeat the racists or put in place durable guardrails to blunt their power and effectiveness, Shor’s advice is that the Democrats need to give these voters as much of what they want as possible.
But Shor’s argument fails on its own terms, as a political strategy, too. It’s just not a workable approach to winning elections in an era where an authoritarian party is making race and immigration the central axis of politics. As Mystal put it,
That’s why, even operating with the same basic facts about white America that Shor is—a majority of white voters are racist and will punish Democrats for being insufficiently so—it’s possible to draw a completely different electoral conclusion. The only way out is up: Democrats have to turn out every Black or brown voter they can find; they have to turn out every white college educated voter who rejects bigotry; and they have to ensure that those voters will have frictionless access to the ballot and that their votes will actually be counted. Some of those voters of color will vote Republican, of course, but healthy majorities will vote for Democrats if Democrats give them something to vote for. Overpowering Republicans with enthusiasm and turnout is the only way to beat them, because trying to appease them is both morally intolerable and strategically foolish.
There are many unfortunate things about the way Shor has engaged important questions. Shor is actually right that there is a wide cultural and class divide between the professional, activist left and working-class people of color, wider now than in many years. We need to have some real talk about the ways in which insular activist culture is alienating rather than welcoming. (We’ll return to this topic in a later issue). And, the loss of working-class votes to authoritarian politics here and around the world demands rigorous debate, analysis, and strategy. Those points will likely get lost because Shor’s own blind spots have led him into a trap of racial amnesia.
The debate is also unfortunate because Shor (and some of the ensuing commentary) fail to engage the serious work of thinkers and practitioners of color who, using actual evidence, argue for a winning path to progressive politics and policy. We’d recommend instead Steve Phillips on the question of how to build a durable multi-racial coalition, (see his excellent recent Nation article, “Primary Krysten Sinema,” which makes the case for why Sinema’s appeal to “moderate” white voters is a mistake on purely political grounds), Equis Labs on how to understand the realities of the Latinx vote, Heather McGhee (who we are thrilled will be joining Deepak on the faculty of CUNY’s School of Labor and Urban Studies) on a narrative and policy agenda that centers race and class, and john powell on the very necessary work of bridging across identity without losing core principles. We’d also point to an important Way to Win analysis, featured in Ron Brownstein’s column “What Democrats Need to Understand About the Changing Electorate,” arguing for investment in expanding the electorate, particularly focusing on infrequent voters of color. And surely Stacey Abrams, Nse Ufot, and others who helped turned Georgia blue might be better guides for the Democrats’ strategy than a twentysomething data guy who hasn’t won anything. (Abrams makes her case with abundant numbers and real-world stories in her brilliant book Our Time is Now.)
Perhaps the most unfortunate thing about the Shor controversy, though, is that it has distracted from the Democrats’ actual and very real race and immigration problems. Biden is losing support among core constituencies, especially Black and Latinx voters. A crucial article by Cleve R. Wootson, Jr. in The Washington Post, “‘Frustration is at an all-time high’: Behind Biden’s Falling Poll Numbers,” begins with a powerful rebuke from Atlanta:
W. Mondale Robinson spent a large chunk of last fall in clubs and bars and concert venues in Georgia, trying to convince disenchanted Black men that casting a ballot — in the 2020 general election, then the Georgia runoffs for the U.S. Senate — could finally mean real change in their communities.
But Robinson, founder of the Black Male Voter Project, thinks the case would be a lot harder to make now. He remembers the exact moment his optimism that President Biden would be different began to fade: when Democrats in May said they were willing to significantly weaken a policing-reform bill to get Republican support.
More disappointments followed. Robinson was dismayed that Biden did not push for changes to the filibuster to enact a $15 minimum wage. He was upset that the president did not try to halt a raft of voting restrictions passed by Georgia’s GOP-led legislature.
“I think the frustration is at an all-time high, and Biden can’t go to Georgia or any other Black state in the South and say, ‘This is what we delivered in 2021,’ ” said Robinson, whose group believes it reached 1.2 million Black men in Georgia. “Black men are pissed off about the nothingness that has happened. . . . Does it make the work harder? It makes the work damn near impossible.”
Pew Research Center polls found Biden’s approval rating among Black Americans fell from 85 percent in July to 67 percent in September, while also falling 16 points among Hispanics and 14 points among Asians . . .
The biggest single imperative for Democrats right now should be to deliver for people in meaningful and visible ways, likely a necessary but insufficient step to reverse the slide among base voters. That includes the Build Back Better agenda, which is too big to fail but is seriously imperiled by strategic blunders made months ago that have ripened into crisis. Democrats must also prioritize rather than avoid immigration and voting rights. There has been performative public support and some behind-the-scenes action by the Administration thus far on racial justice and immigrant rights, but little has been delivered that is visible to people. What has been visible to busy, low-information voters (the assault on Haitian migrants at the border, for example) has signaled continuity, not rupture, with what has come before. In a new piece for Democracy Journal entitled “Cruelty Has Consequences,” Cristina Jimenez and Deepak argue that Biden must reverse the trajectory of his approach to immigration — or we are in for a moral and political catastrophe.
The barbaric treatment of Haitian refugees by the U.S. government has exposed the incoherence of the Biden Administration’s approach to immigration and the racist roots of our immigration system. By speaking out against the use of horses to chase down migrants while simultaneously denying most Haitians even the chance to apply for asylum and deporting them without due process, Biden has given us much of the substance of Trump’s cruelty while trying to avoid the grotesque and vicious visuals, the cages and horses, that offend Democratic base constituencies. The Administration obviously thinks this feint is good politics, but it’s a disastrous miscalculation. . . .
So, what should Biden do to reverse course? In the short term, he can insist on inclusion of a path to citizenship for millions of immigrants in the Build Back Better legislation pending before Congress. If the Democrats repeat their failure to deliver reform with unified control of both houses of Congress and the presidency, the human and political consequences will be severe. . . .
A failure to change course would betray promises made to voters to move us away from Trump’s vision and empower white nationalists and an insurgent anti-democratic right wing. . . .
Contrary to what Shor says, our experience of politics is that people rally to support people that they feel are fighting for them. People don’t make decisions based on slide rule calculations of the costs and benefits of particular policy positions — we deploy a gut-level, animal sense to judge whether politicians are deeply connected to our experience and are loyal to us. Generating that kind of bond with voters is Trump’s evil genius. He knows how to pick fights that animate emotion and build group identity and loyalty. The Biden administration’s more dry, cerebral approach to governance isn’t forging such bonds so that even delivering for people by itself isn’t likely to solve the enthusiasm problem. There is no shortage of villains to pick definitional fights with — predatory corporations, white supremacists, and crazy Republican Governors are not exactly hard to find. In the presence of a deep emotional connection, voters can bear losses and setbacks on policy — working people and people of color especially know from their own experience that there are entrenched, powerful interests that often win. What’s demoralizing is the sense that the people to whom you have been loyal don’t have your back when things get hard. If not quickly reversed, the growing perception of timidity or fecklessness in mainstream Democrats’ approach to race and immigration in communities of color will do damage in 2022 and beyond.
Progressive governance is hard at all times but governing with such narrow majorities in the face of an authoritarian mobilization against democracy presents immense challenges. And like it or not, the prospects of outside movements and the Democrats are linked. But that doesn’t mean that movements should give uncritical support to bad Democratic strategies. The best present we can give to the Democrats right now is to pressure them forcefully to do what is morally and politically necessary on race and immigrant rights. New York immigrant rights groups are doing this by mounting round-the-clock vigils outside Sen. Schumer’s house to demand his leadership on immigration. Shor, and many conventional pundits, would consider this pressure on Democrats to lead on a controversial issue to be destructive. They are wrong. Whether democracy in America survives depends on the extent to which movements, working with progressive allies inside Congress, can shake mainstream Democrats out of their complacency into the more aggressive governing posture that these times demand.