Only one top Dem knows how to turn the tables on Trump and his sniveling minions
The president has been working hard trying to convince Americans that crime is so bad right now that he has no choice but to send armed military to patrol major cities to restore law and order, in the process stripping citizens of rights and liberties in the name of public safety.
Unfortunately, the reaction among Democratic leaders has been mixed, to put it mildly, but I think California Governor Gavin Newsom has shown a way forward. He said that if Donald Trump truly cared about crime, he would βinvest in crime suppressionβ in states like βSpeaker Johnsonβs state and district.β
Look at the murder rate in Louisiana, he said. Itβs βnearly four times higher than Californiaβs.β
The implication, of course, is that neither Trump nor the Republicans in the Congress actually care about crime. They only say they do as a smokescreen for trying to subdue, control and βownβ their perceived liberal enemies residing in cities and states governed by Democrats.
And because Newsomβs allegation β that Trump and the Republicans care less about crime than they do political oppression βrang so loudly and clearly, the House speaker was asked on Fox to respond. What I want to tell you is that it was a sight to behold!
βWe have crime in cities all across America and we are against that everywhere,β Johnson said. βMy hometown of Shreveport has done a great job of reducing crime gradually. Weβve got to address it everywhere that it rears its ugly head, and I think every major city in the country, the residents of those cities are open to that, and anxious to have it, and weβre β¦ the party thatβs going to bring that forward.β
Amazing! Why? Because in that brief moment, the Republican leader of the United States Congress sounded just like a Democrat would sound after being attacked by a Republican.
Johnson does not counterattack. He did not say Newsom was lying (Newsom was not lying). Instead, Johnson did what his counterpart Hakeem Jeffries often does after a Republican lays into him. He retreated to a βreasonable manβsβ position to show that his party is the party that really cares about crime.
How did this happen?
First, Newsom told the truth. Red-state crime surpasses blue-state crime.
Second, by telling the truth, he questioned Trumpβs intentions. If crime is such an emergency in Washington and Chicago that he has to send in the military to restore public safety, why isnβt he doing that in Louisiana? Why isnβt the House speaker demanding law and order? The implied answer is they donβt really care about law and order, only whether what they say about it leads to the subjugation they desire.
But importantly, Newsom did not accept as true anything Trump and the Republicans say about crime and public safety. He did not validate any of their lies. He did not concede any ground to them. He did not say to himself, βWell, Americans really are concerned about crime and Democrats shouldnβt ignore that.β He knows Trump does not care, and did not cover up bad faith with good faith. Most of all, he did not, as historian Timothy Snyder often warns, surrender in advance.
The result?
Johnson retreated. In the face of attack, he tried making himself seem like βthe adult in the room.β
βWeβve got to address [crime] everywhere that it rears its ugly head.β He did what Democrats do. Thatβs amazing.
Most Democrats do not have the megaphone that Newsom has. Most are not going to force Fox to ask high-level Republicans to respond to them. Even so, what Newsom is doing is replicable. Do not accept in any way the lies told by Trump and the GOP, even when, or especially when, those lies come out of the mouths of independent voters. The Republicans do not mean what they say. They do not act in good faith. Overlooking this fundamental truth inevitably makes things worse.
This is why I see potential disaster in efforts by a βnew coalitionβ of more than 100 βnew Demsβ in the House to show voters they really care about immigration reform. The Washington Post reported on the groupβs βbipartisanβ proposal, a mix of increased βborder securityβ and more ways for immigrants to reside legally. And while that may sound reasonable, itβs not, because it accepts as true the allegations against undocumented immigrants: that they are committing serious crimes.
They are not. Entering the US without authorization is a misdemeanor on par with reckless driving and breaching the peace. Because itβs also a civil offense, judges hear cases in immigration court, not criminal court. βUnlawful entryβ doesnβt rise to a felony unless itβs been done many times over, and most immigrants, once they come, they stay.
This is not news to the Democrats, but they have ceded this ground over and over for decades in the mistaken belief that it was better to compromise with the Republicans than to fight them head on, even though the Republicans, especially after 2016, did not act in good faith.
They said the immigration issue was about βlaw and order.β They said it was about βborder integrity.β They said it was about an important thing that mattered to everyone. It was never so. The immigration issue was always about maintaining the dominance of white people in America.
But by accepting the Republicansβ lies in βthe spirit of bipartisanship,β the Democrats made the lies real. They also made themselves complicit in turning immigrants into threats so monstrous that the president was justified in creating a secret police force (ICE) that is now breaking the law and profaning the Constitution to expel βthe criminal aliens.β
Worst of all perhaps is that while finding βcommon groundβ with liars and bigots, the Democrats have not mounted an unadulterated defense of immigration. It is good, in and of itself β for our economy, our communities and our culture. We should want more immigrants to become Americans. We should make it easier for them, not harder. And we can do that by upholding the true meaning of law and order.
That immigration is an essential good is implicit in recent polling that shows the uglier Trump gets with immigrants, the less popular he gets. To me, that suggests an opportunity for the Democrats. But before they move ahead, they should follow Gavin Newsomβs example in believing bipartisanship does not require surrendering in advance.