'Alarming': Expert says Dems went from leading key issue to being 'under Trump's boot'

Democratic strategist Frank Sharry sounded the alarm in a Bulwark interview released Monday that Democrats let themselves be completely rolled on immigration by Donald Trump.

Sharry, who elaborated on his feelings in an Atlantic article he co-authored with former Obama administration strategist Cecilia Muñoz, said that just a decade ago Democrats had broad public backing on the issue. Due to a series of missteps, they gave Trump an opening to turn it into their greatest weakness.

"Let's start with the premise of the piece, which is that Democrats have lost touch with popular opinion on immigration, predominantly by moving left, away from a more balanced approach, which was enforcement in exchange for pathways to citizenship," said interviewer Sam Stein. "My first question is, why did you decide to write this now?"

"Well, we've been concerned about the direction of the pro-immigrant movement for many years," said Sharry. "We've been very concerned that Democrats have allowed themselves to get defined by Republicans on this issue, and in the aftermath of the election, when there's a necessary if painful conversation among Democrats about which way forward now, we looked around and said, 'You know, there's really no one else who's going to write this story, right?' From a relatively speaking insider perspective on how we slowly but surely went from being in command of the issue 10 years ago to being under the boot of Trump and Trumpism on the issue, and that's an alarming progression on immigration."

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The fundamental problem, Sharry argued, dates to when President Barack Obama, despite being so tough on border enforcement that activists criticized him as a "Deporter in Chief," failed to get a bipartisan deal on comprehensive immigration reform. This led many Democrats to reject giving Republicans anything on immigration going forward, as they felt it would just make them look weak — but along the way, they forgot that border enforcement isn't solely a Republican issue, but something broadly supported by the public.

Harris herself emphasized her record on prosecuting criminal gangs causing border violence, and tried to push for bipartisanship on the issue again — but by that point, Trump had already seized the issue away from Democrats, even as he worked behind the scenes to tank that very deal.

"It's had a huge impact," he said. "I mean, a lot of the postmortem polling showed that immigration was the issue that helped Trump the most and hurt Kamala Harris the most, right? And so we just said, you know, there's lots to say about policy and specifics, but as a branding exercise as a narrative exercise, Democrats went from being, 'We're for the solution in a balanced way that won 3/4 of the public's backing', to, 'We're not so sure we're even for enforcement, and if we are it's kind of an afterthought.' And most of the country said, 'We'd rather take a chance on a radical racist on immigration than go with Democrats because they seem so squishy on the issue now.'"

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