Found time after being privately livid at Bibi!
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However, people with my views aren't in power, nor have power. Instead, the Biden adminsitration is crippled by a house that would never, EVER provide more funding for handling border crossings and immigration. The GOP want to see huge lines, people in cages, over-worked, stressed border agents doing horrible things. That's their whole schtick. Further, Biden himself is supposed to be there representing his constituents. And more and more, Americans are sounding like people from my little country: America for Americans. The days of the huddled masses are over, I'd wager less than 50% of under 35 year-olds even know what the inscription is on the statue of liberty, and probably think it was built in the bronx.
So, that's where I sit in terms of what I expect from Biden. As I've tried to articulate, I want a totally different world. But given Biden's actual ability to do anything coupled with what his potential voters WANT from him on immigration - and most importantly given the alternative in November - I totally understand why things are playing out like they are.
There is a world where a huge media campaign highlighting that (reminder
America is built on the backs of immigrants. It is an immigrant country. Most of the most major brands have had immigrants at the forefront of success. Athletes, rock stars, movie stars all come from a huge diverse melting-pot of places. Even just calling out the actual demographics of the place would probably shock some people. We could feature amazing stories of asylum seekers bravely giving up their whole lives to see safety in the US and then turning that into amazing contributions to society. But that's all hard. Maybe the next generation will be better, we have to hope so.
As I said before, I understand the political calculation to support a deeply immoral bill that will have generation-long repercussions for how the third world will live (and die) with accelerating climate change. Biden is in the chair to represent suburban homeowners who did not like Trump's rudeness - they were the swing demographic between 2016 and 2020. They want brown people to rot, and so they will rot.
What I'm saying is that people are going to reach to this in ways you might not like. Some have moral standards and red lines. Some have personal connections with what is happening at the border. Like very political move, this has winners and losers. Almost all the losers are part of his vote base.
I don't fully buy this notion that the bill is harsh *purely* as a response to changing voter sentiment. Voter sentiment on supplying Israel with weapons is
negative among Democrats and
neutral-to-negative among "independents", which would mean it is quite negative among Dem-leaning independents (the people really essential to re-election). This has been the case
even in the direct aftermath of Oct 7! The only people with whom it is substantially popular are Republicans - the people still identifying with that party in 2024 - which I think you'll agree aren't where Biden is going to find voters. If he was driven purely by electoral calculations, he could have appeased a vocally upset base with a bold statement, a bill veto, backing a UN SC resolution, etc, 2-3 months ago. He has instead gone out of his way to mock Palestinian suffering ("they can't shoot straight", "I don't believe their numbers", the UNRWA stunt), fund Israel without waiting for Congress, bomb countries on their behalf, and of course make sure nothing can touch them at the UN. "'""Leaks"""" about his "private anger" against Bibi are a played-out joke,
transparently planted literally every week to keep the most gullible voters in line. That's what happens when his personal moral stance - support Israel, always - actually matters and dictates his administration policy.
So what we're seeing in one case is political calculation shoving an important votebase under the bus, and in another, personal moral conviction against his bases' wishes. To be blunt, he believes more in Israel's right to kill children than he does about the "huddled masses" at his border. For somebody campaigning on "empathy", from the "nice" party, this isn't in line with how many of his voters see themselves or their interests. I would not be surprised, or blame his votebase, if some abandoned him.
And finally, about the hypothetical pro-immigrant media campaign. They aren't 1:1 with Fox, but the newsrooms and staff of most mainstream media is very heavily blue, and would certainly be amenable to suggestions from the administration. See the campaign in 2020 calling his stumbling over words "a stutter" - a line faithfully repeated by mainstream outlets, despite everybody having access to clips from 2012 or even 2016, where he sounds much sharper. At any point during the last three years, watching their voters turn to the right, the administration could have started, and asked friendly journalists to promote, a campaign spreading the opposite perception of immigrants. I have no idea if it would have worked. But there wasn't even an attempt. Beyond votes, this kind of bipartisan anti-immigrant stance leads to the GOP going further right forever (see Fox proudly airing an anti-immigrant lynch mob at Times Square beating up an Asian citizen).
For what it's worth, I'm a resident not a citizen, so don't have a vote, and live in a place where a vote has zero deciding power anyway (NY). I personally hope Biden lives out the rest of his life like the average Gazan of his age.