'Trump was right' - John Kerry says Democrats allowed migrant 'siege' of US border
Former US Secretary of State John Kerry has told the BBC his fellow Decratmocrats allowed the US-Mexico border to be "under siege" during Joe Biden's presidency.
In sometimes sharp words, Kerry - who was the Democratic presidential nominee in 2004 and a US senator from Massachusetts - said he told Biden the party had "missed" on the issue of immigration for years.
He said this had allowed Republicans like Donald Trump to gain political advantage.
[...] Democrats have also wrestled with how they should handle Trump's recent nationwide attempts to detain and deport undocumented migrants
"The first thing any president should say - or anybody in public life - is without a border protected, you don't have a nation," Kerry said. "I wish President Biden had been heard more often saying, I'm going to enforce the law."
Such words have been a familiar refrain for Trump during his time in national politics and were included in the 2024 Republican Party policy platform.
But Democrats - many of whom advocate more relaxed immigration laws and a pathway to citizenship for undocumented migrants - attempted to portray Trump's positions as harsh and discriminatory.
According to Kerry, that was a mistake.
"Trump was right," Kerry said. "The problem is we all should have been right."
[... In LA] Over the weekend, armed federal agents and 90 California National Guard troops conducted an operation in the city's MacArthur Park - a gathering place for nearby immigrant communities. The officials swept through the park on foot, horseback and in armoured vehicles.
"To me, this is another example of the administration ratcheting up chaos by deploying what looked like a military operation in an American city," Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, a Democrat, said at an impromptu news conference near the park.
Rob Bonta, the California attorney general, issued a statement denouncing what he said was a "cruel and familiar pattern of attacks on our immigrant communities by an administration that thrives on fear and division".
The denunciations, and the legal battles, echo the tactics Democrats relied on during Trump's first presidential term, when the Republican policy of separating migrant families that crossed the US-Mexico border generated widespread national outrage.
Such concerns faded, however, and by 2024 stringent immigration enforcement once again became a top Republican talking point.
Can't have it both ways. Either say the idea behind the effort itself is okay, as Kerry asserts, but the way Trump's doing it is insane, or oppose it all with the fact that birthrate and population dynamics are that more citizens are going off the labor market than into it to take menial jobs, so immigration is an answer, or avoid that and only carp over handling of things. Labor mobility vs capital mobility across a border is how the issue sits in its most abstract terms. Moneied employers want labor mobiliity to oversupply the labor market to enhance employer price power, while the UAW, for example, wants labor pricing to be as high as they can get in their market segment. Ag workers, they're underpaid for long hard hours in hot sunlight, farm ownership knows this, and wants high illegal labor mobility.
It is not easy, but Kerry is correct that the Dem Party must articulate a sound policy explanation and can then maintain criticism of ways and means. Opinions can differ, but nobody can deny the Republicans made the issue key to their win in the Nov 2024 elections. Winning legislative thin majorities, both houses, and taking the executive Brance while already having poisoned the top judiciary.
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Breitbart carries its version of the story, dated yesterday, including:
The BBC’s compliant reporter, James Naughtie, quickly changed the subject from Biden’s failure to Biden’s retirement during the 2024 race. This shift allowed the BBC reporter to not ask Kerry why Biden and his deputies welcomed roughly 10 million migrants which flatlined wages, spiked housing inflation, and handed the 2024 election over to Donald Trump.
Democrats are dodging those questions in the aftermath of the 2024 disaster, partly because lobbyists are pushing them to increase the inflow of migrants through the nation’s borders and into Americans’ jobs, schools, communities, and politics.
On July 6, for example, two Indian-origin Democrats pushed a plan that would welcome millions of immigrant workers from India.
The plan was drafted by the president of the influential Center for American Progress, Neera Tanden, and the center’s senior director of Immigration Policy, Debu Ghandi. Tanden was a top advisor to Joe Biden, and Ghandi formerly worked for Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Il).
[...] The plan echoes President George W. Bush’s “Any Willing Worker” scheme that would have allowed U.S. employers to hire poor people from around the world instead of hiring Americans. The Tanden plan also echoes the economic priorities of the Indian government, which is seeking to migrate many Indians into Americans’ jobs, schools, and legislatures.
The plan is chiefly intended to boost the inflow of migrants — mostly of whom will vote Democratic — which will worsen the damage to Americans’ wages, productivity, and innovation caused since 1990.
Aiming shame at Democrats and mainline non-MAGA Republicans together, pure Breitbart. That outlet was all over Biden month after month before the 2024 election with stories of border porosity.
Biden had made Harris his border czar and then let her twist slowly in the wind before tardily withdrawing and saying, "Here's Kamala." As if it might not have been happenstance, but instead intentional, after the Clyburn/South Carolina endorsement was withheld until Biden gave Clyburn a committment to name a woman of color as VP. Perhaps the condition was Harris specific, but as an Asian African American she checked two boxes. At any rate Clyburn's guy is out at DFC and Martin is in and purging the likes of Hogg while Teacher and Pubic Worker union heads have resigned from the committee. Damage control enough, but party unity behind "support American workers" still needs implementation in full.
Martin is trying his best, while entrenched disgruntled people are making the road hard.
But, yes, Breitbart is correct in pointing out the Bush family was promotionally big on labor market expansion in the US to help big business to keep labor costs low as a near-religious mantra, whether firms faced labor intensive situations or were greatly automated. As in, Musk needs union workers to leaven his spirit and broaden his perspectives. Teach him a military salute instead of a fascist one, etc.
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With Crabgrass's discerning readers it could be viewed as an insult to reader intelligence, but it gets pointed out anyway that Breitbart's last two quoted paragraphs say W Bush had the same plan, which was to boost Democratic Party voters. That's meeting yourself walking your story back the other way, which deserved at least an intervening paragraph to make things float better. But factor in, it is Breitbart. And the truth is neither party represented worker interest in fair pay for fair work.
Each party favors and is loyal and in thrall to big donor/big money so that Breitbart misrepresents causation about the fact that since 1990 wages have stagnated, as that is the result of conscious bipartisan policy, from Clinton/Newt onward, each party meeting the big donor expectations of the times. Together.
And AI marches on. Percentage of labor force unionized has gone down, in parallel to decline in inflation adjusted pay. Now Chat and Claud and other LLM usage can automate the pencil pushing, so grunt labor is not the only sector to suffer. The big money is getting us all.
Trump is a social Darwinist, with his voters not the fittest.
Bless implementation of Project 2025. Bless the Heritage Foundation and its leader Kevin Roberts, and bless John Roberts, with the two kindred in spirit, if not genetically. Twin sons of different mothers, fathered by greed and pliability. Class warfare by the rich against the People, that's as old as sin. And generation of warriors that way keep showing up, some in bloodlines, others as opportunists. A cosmetic difference from the Roberts situation, John Foster Dulles and Alan Dulles were actual brothers during Eisenhower days and later John Kerry and W Bush ran against each other while each stunk of money and class privilege. It is our Constitutional democracy in action. As the founders of the nation planned it.
I think "Great Again" means to Trump the period after the Civil War and before trust busting thoughts matured into the wealthy facing some token regulation. The period when the Buffalo Soldiers were recruited by government to hunt down indigenous people so railroad owners could lay track wherever they wanted without risk of mishap. But you'd have to ask Trump. That is only my guess. Today I guess his mind runs: no frontier, no immigrants needed to bust sod or find and mine silver. Who knows.
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DHS Memo Requires ICE Agents to Stop Carrying Certain Sig Sauer Service Weapons, Switch to Glock
The Buffalo Soldiers, were provided Buffalo Springfield rifles, or Remingtons or Sharps, for their hunting. The Buffalo Guns were the first sniper rifle. One shot, one kill. They were cartridge rifles, not muzzle loaders. At some distance to the herd animals could be dropped without any real likelihood of spooking a stampede and being trampled. And at a distance the animals expected no danger and were there, quiet for the shooting. Detention and transporting illegal aliens by ICE is more humane than shooting dead and using the skulls for fertilizer. So humane our nation's ICE agents are.