You can’t out-racist Republicans. It would be like trying to beat Sabrina Ionescu in a three-point contest, or Joey Chestnut at hot dog eating. Sure, Bill Clinton went all in on racist rhetoric for the 1994 Crime Bill’s passage, and Biden fought FOR segregation in the 1970s, but the champ is the champ for a reason. Republicans are the GOATs of racism, the decades-long leaders in the United States for bigotry and discrimination.
Republicans have put racism front and center for everything they do these days, eschewing dog whistles in favor of bullhorns, a development supercharged by one Donald J. Trump and widely adopted throughout the GOP. In fact, data shows that racism is THE motivating factor for GOP voters. Look at this article breaking down how Trump won in 2016.This sentence could not be clearer:
“In our models, racial attitudes towards blacks and immigration are the key factors associated with support for Trump.”
See also these findings reported in The Atlantic in June of 2023:
“Studies of the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections conducted by the Tufts political scientist Brian Schaffner and his colleagues used the Cooperative Election Study, a large-scale national poll, to determine the factors that predicted which candidate voters supported in those races. Those studies found that in each contest, the single best predictor of who voted for Trump was the belief that systemic racism no longer exists in the U.S.; the second-best predictor was denial that systemic bias exists against women.”
Given that Trump is the end all and be all of the Republican Party, by the transitive property these statements about race can be applied to the entire GOP.
So why, oh why, oh why oh why oh why, are Democrats trying to go head-to-head against Republicans on racism? In two key areas - immigration, and the unfolding genocide in Gaza - the Democratic Party’s policies AND rhetoric are breathtakingly racist.
Let’s tackle immigration first, since it is now the top concern for many Americans.
The Democrats’ position on immigration is singularly awful. The recently proposed immigration package from the Dems, bundled together with supplemental war funding, would have expanded a nationwide system of expedited removals, restarted Title 42, and implemented “Safe Third Country” restrictions. Expedited removals means mass deportations. Title 42 was a Trump-era provision to speed up deportations at the border with Mexico. And Safe Third Country restrictions is the asylum ban by another name.
Everything about these bills accepts a right-wing framework for the discussion. There is a ‘crisis’ at the border, for one, and that undocumented immigration is a threat that must be dealt with. Absent is the usual lip service to Dreamers, to a pathway to legalization. The Democrats went pure Republican on the bill. Of course, because Republicans exist primarily to serve the interests of one insurrectionist, they rejected the Democrats, because to do anything, even something that fulfills every horrid dream Republicans have ever had about what to do about immigration, before the election, would be counterproductive to the electoral efforts of said insurrectionist. Shorter: Republicans rejected this shitty bill even though it was everything they could have ever dreamed of, because it might stymy Trump’s chances in 2024.
Pundits fell over themselves to declare the wisdom of this moral failure by the Democrats. Here’s commentary from January from CNN talking about the Democrats “go[ing] on offense on border security.” NBC News similarly called it a ‘pivot to offense.’ The AP, Reuters, The Hill all deployed that most staid of adjectives - ‘tough.’
And when Democrat Tom Suozzi flipped a seat in the NY-03 special election, the House seat formerly held by preternatural liar George Santos, by, among other things, running pro-ICE ads, the centrist Third Way types nearly overheated such was their excitement to proclaim that a right wing approach to immigration was surely the path to victory for Democrats.
Everything Democrats have done so far has been a cynical electoral maneuver, using human beings as bargaining chips in pursuit of big wins in 2024, specifically the biggest win of all, the White House. Only…as it turns out, people still think Biden is a failure on the border.
Now, let’s turn to Joe Biden’s repeated failure to rein in Israel’s slaughter in Gaza. 30,000 people, nearly half of whom are children, have been killed since October 7th in Palestine. The rate at which civilians have been killed in Gaza has not been reached since the 1991 genocide in Rwanda. Nearly two million people in Gaza are at immediate risk of starvation. Mosques, schools, hospitals, refugee camps - all have been targeted for military strikes by the IDF.
We’ve seen example after example of genocidal intent from up and down Israeli society, from IDF soldiers gleefully detonating homes, to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu himself invoking Amalek in October of 2023. (In the Bible, God commands King Saul to kill every person in Amalek, a rival nation to Israel). On January 26th, the International Court of Justice issued a legally binding ruling requiring Israel to do everything in its power to prevent acts of genocide in Gaza. The ruling has been ignored.
Throughout these months of senseless killings, Democrats have joined hands with Republicans to continue the sale of billions of dollars worth of weapons to Israel. In fact, the Biden Administration went around Congress more than once to approve ‘emergency’ weapons sales to Israel. At one point, Biden said that he had ‘no confidence’ in the death toll figures coming out of Gaza. There is a notable imbalance in the way he discusses casualties.
(And to dispense with the argument that Joe Biden isn’t in a position to DO anything about Israel, since he is the President of the United States and not the Prime Minister of Israel, one needs only to note that Ronald Reagan of all people was able to curtail Israel’s conduct in Lebanon with a single phone call. Or note that Israel is heavily, crucially dependent on US military aid to continue their slaughter in Gaza and the Occupied West Bank).
As with immigration, there is wide dissatisfaction with Biden’s approach to Gaza, with clear majorities disapproving of his disastrous approach. The wider electoral consequences for Biden are somewhat muddier in the near term, with both sides claiming victory in the campaign to mark ballots ‘uncommitted’ in the Michigan primary.
Here’s the perfect place to break free from the narrow, functionally useless horserace analysis of these two closely related policy frameworks from Biden and the Democrats. There are some Democrats who spoke out against this horrid immigration bill, just as there are a handful of Democrats who have signed a House Resolution calling for an immediate and lasting ceasefire. Broadly, however, Biden’s positions on these two issues represent the party consensus - at least the party consensus on what to do politically.
The problem is that Biden's positions represent the party consensus on what to do politically - while most of the party members including elected officials do not believe it is the right course of action morally. Thus, they are acting in bad faith, and worse, responding defensively to Trump's actions. Thus, the articles saying Biden is "taking the offensive" are also incorrect. And it is just this strategic idiocy that is killing the party.
These policy approaches are racist. Full stop. In the case of immigration, the entire suite of policy proposals rests on the premise that undocumented migrants are threatening, using a scarcity mindset to describe a ‘crisis’ at the border that can only be met with a militarized response. The devaluation of Palestinian lives is essential to Biden and the Dem’s policy towards Israel, as well. Support for an ethno-state which has been found by credible international law to be in the midst of a genocide - it would be impossible to support this without a worldview that subordinates Palestinians to subhuman status.
In case it isn’t patently obvious, there is no electoral benefit accrued to the Democrats from engaging in this moral abdication. And more importantly, there are significant long-term harms to not just the Democratic party, but to the United States as a whole when both major political parties are using right wing frameworks and deploying racist ideology.
Right now, in the United States, as in many countries around the world, a resurgent fascist threat presents the most urgent threat to everyone and everything you might care about. And dealing with both the systemic conditions that gave rise to this movement, while simultaneously addressing this threat head-on, is the single gravest concern of anyone concerned about human rights and human flourishing.
Targeting immigrants with dehumanizing language and policy has long been a primary tool of fascists, defining ingroups and outgroups while providing a focal point for hate. We’ve reached the point where right-wing outlets like Fox News are running segments specially highlighting crimes committed by undocumented immigrants, despite the settled criminal justice fact that undocumented immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than native citizens.
There ARE affirmative, non-fear based, non-scarcity messages on immigration that Democrats could deploy, of course. When Democrats employ the same rhetoric and policy as fascists, they are stabbing their own constituency in the back, which generates negative outcomes in the short term, electorally. Longer term, the result is even more disastrous, with these compounding moral failures eroding the energy and optimism of the potential base, breeding the kind of cynicism that is anathema to the pursuit of truly progressive aims.
When Democrats use the language of fascists, and proffer the policy of fascists, they are, by definition, advancing the cause of fascism. It is precisely this lack of systemic, long term thinking that has led to the moribund state of the Democratic Party of 2024, a party that can’t be bothered to raise a finger against a genocide, has failed to hold the major plotters accountable for January 6th, and is trying to convince a country where millions of people live paycheck to paycheck that they should be grateful for what Bidenomics has brought them.
For those of us who ground our vision for the future in an affirmative, human rights centered framework of progressivism, it is important we agree that the way forward lies not in triangulating concessions to the fascists hungrily destroying everything we care about, but by fully embracing a bold vision of abundance, of justice, and equality.
You can’t win by out-racisting racists. Or as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”