Just now I was listening to the great new NPR Politics podcast. This episode was a “quick take” on the Paris terror attacks.
Now, these podcasters are NPR political correspondents. They are the furthest thing from “low information voters” who are likely to be susceptible to right wing populist appeals. But one guy said that as he saw his Twitter feed blow up with details of the attacks, he couldn’t help himself: he went downstairs and checked to make sure the front door was locked. Another said her husband had driven into work today because he was afraid of taking the train and going through Penn Station.
Think about that for a minute. If people like them are getting freaked out, what do you think is happening to the public at large? I have said for months, years even that this presidential election is the Democrats’ to lose. But they CAN lose it. And right now it looks like the best way to do so is to stand firmly on the principle of opening our hearts, borders, and doors to Syrian refugees.
So even if I accept for the sake of argument that this is the “right” position to take on the merits, I don’t see how we can escape the conclusion that it’s a political millstone. And if we stand for this on principle, we might not only not get what we want on this issue, we may well also usher into the Oval Office a Republican like Trump who will come in and sign the repeal of Obamacare, slash food stamps, put a corporate stooge in charge of the EPA, loosen regulation of Wall Street and of corporate America generally, persecute Latinos, stop meaningfully investigating police shootings of African Americans, and appoint federal judges including Supreme Court justices who will set back civil rights and liberties. And that is all just the tip of the iceberg!
OR…we as Democrats can triangulate and say “Okay, it might not be a good idea to bring in Syrian men. But we are not going to be like the heartless Republicans and turn away women and their small children. Furthermore, let’s look by contrast at how little we have to fear from immigrants from Latin America. We should be welcoming them with open arms, and providing legal status for those already here.” That’s a winning political message, and even if you think it is unjust for the Syrian men turned away, in utilitarian terms it does the most progressive good for the most people.
If another major attack occurs closer to the election, especially one on American soil, I think it will tip the election to the Republicans. It’s a precarious thing.
Yes, let’s abandon our principles and international obligations and toss thousands of innocent lives to the wolves in order to assuage a momentary panic.
It’s funny you would frame it that way, because I see a lot of the lefty Bernie Sanders crowd arguing that we should refuse to go to war with ISIS even if France invokes Article 5 of the NATO treaty. Talk about abandoning international obligations!
But what I’m proposing is that instead of the 10,000 refugees President Obama proposes to take, we open our doors to far more–maybe even ten times as many. But women and young children only. The men can stay and fight ISIS.
One of the 9/11 hijackers came here on a student visa and we didn’t decide to make universities Americans-only for fear of terrorists. I ask the OP: should Democrats have caved to paranoia and proposed that, mainly in order to try to win the 2002 elections?
No, because that proposal isn’t remotely comparable to what I’m proposing. Again, the pitch is as follows:
“Okay, it might not be a good idea to bring in Syrian men. But we are not going to be like the heartless Republicans and turn away women and their small children. Furthermore, let’s look by contrast at how little we have to fear from immigrants from Latin America. We should be welcoming them with open arms, and providing legal status for those already here.”
What you are trying to offer as an analogy (or straw man) looks a lot more like Trump’s closed door policy.
Our borders are not open to everyone who has not committed a crime. Even the most liberal on this issue tout a supposedly tough vetting process. But presumably that process does not only weed out convicted criminals!
Pandering to those transient irrational reactions, as understandable as they are, putatively in service of political expediency, is not leadership; it is not what leaders should be doing. Of course it is what many in the GOP are doing and proves that they are not worthy of the mantle.
Evil doers have many paths to where they want to be. Blocking every male refugee will not provide absolute safety, blacking every refugee will not. One of those terrorists was carrying the passport of someone who was a refugee and perhaps had come in as one … but others were French citizens including ones born in France. Will you refuse entry to all EU citizens who are male Muslims? Deport all American male Muslims? Maybe just first borns … And there have been female suicide bombers too you know. And children.
It is an irrational response born of an understandable knee jerk fear response but it is a response that would compound human tragedy with more human tragedy, punish victims of war or even put them back into harms way making military action all the more complicated and strengthening the hand of our enemy.
Seriously this is like responding to Trump’s Hispanic comments with, well the rapists he mentions are pretty much all men, so letting Hispanic men stay here might not be a good idea, but we won’t be like the heartless Republicans and deport women and their small children. Except for the greater tragic consequences involved.
So you think it is unambiguously more just to take a significantly smaller number of refugees and make them wait much longer in camps or detention centers before they are allowed to enter the US. I don’t see how you can be so adamant that your preference is clearly more just than mine. And then when you add in the political ramifications and the effect they have on millions of other people, I think the calculus is quite clearly lopsided in my favor.
And you think it’s more just to break up families against their will and send thousands of people to die due to an accident of birth for the benefit of a photo op and to appease paranoid idiots who will never vote Democratic anyway.
The Democrats tried “give the GOP what they want and maybe they’ll be nice to us” in 2001. History shows how that worked out.
And we tried “let’s not help these refugees because it’ll scare the voters” in 1940, and history shows how that worked out.
You can’t just throw this “send thousands of people to die” accusation at me. I am proposing to vastly increase the numbers of refugees we take, and to take them much more quickly. If I wanted to argue as dishonestly as you are, I could accuse you of wanting to send tens of thousands of people to die because you’re stubbornly refusing to differentiate between men and women and children.
And I’m not trying to attract voters who normally vote Republican. 10 or 15 years ago that did seem like it was what Democrats needed to do; but now we have enough voters of our own in presidential cycles. I’m just trying to prevent catastrophic defections from our side.
Furthermore, am I to take it that you think the current Director of the FBI is a “paranoid idiot”?
It is unconscionable to refuse an entire population (Syrian men) because a tiny fraction of their number are a particular type of criminal. It is immoral to put political success ahead of human suffering. For those two reasons, I think the OP’s proposal is a terrible idea.
Pandering to ignorance is how we got where we are. Let’s just agree to stop.
By discriminating against then. You may as well be saying “We can vastly increase the number of refugees we can take in as long as we don’t take any Jews.”
By fundamentally compromising the values of “our side”.
If he believes that Syrian refugees are ISIS sleeper agents, then yes.
What makes you think that won’t cause a good number of them to JOIN with Da-esh?
As for the OP-- we’re one year away from the election. The Paris attacks, as horrible as they are, will not be a significant factor by then. I know it’s tempting to treat every hot news item of the days as pivotal in the election, but that’s not generally the way it works. Not this far from the election.