When President Biden agreed to bipartisan talks on border legislation last fall, Democratic strategists hoped a deal could take the issue off the table for his re-election campaign.
The crisis at the southwest border has been one of the biggest challenges of Mr. Biden’s presidency, a crisis that has flouted his policy prescriptions and weakened his public support. With record numbers of migrants entering the country illegally, the president has come under pressure from both Democrats and Republicans to take more action.
For three years, Mr. Biden has struggled to give voters a convincing answer to why the border has turned into such a crisis under his leadership. He has avoided public discussion of the issue as much as possible, preferring to focus his messages on other priorities. But with Mr. Trump’s intervention convincing Republicans in Congress to abandon the border deal they themselves demanded, Mr. Biden finally has the opportunity to shift from defense to offense.
“The American people will learn why they failed,” he said in a televised address from the White House. “I’m going to bring this issue to the country, and voters will know that it’s not just a moment – right at the moment when we wanted to secure the border and fund these other programs, Trump and the MAGA Republicans said no.” because they are afraid of Donald Trump.”
“Every day until November,” he added, “the American people will learn that the only reason the border is not secure is because of Donald Trump and his MAGA Republican friends.”
Mr. Trump and his allies scoffed at the idea that Mr. Biden could shift blame after three years of failing to secure the border.
“Joe Biden blamed President Trump for the border crisis that Biden himself caused,” said Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for the former president. “This is a blatant, pathetic lie and the American people know the truth – President Trump’s policies created the most secure border in American history, and it was Joe Biden who undid them.”
Illegal border crossings have increased since Mr. Biden took office.Credit…John Moore/Getty Images
Even as Republicans took a cue from the former president and rejected the deal as inadequate, they sought to make their point about the Biden administration’s immigration failures by impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas. But on Tuesday, the House failed to vote on the bid, an embarrassing setback for Republicans who must now decide whether to try again in the coming weeks.
The border is one of Mr Biden’s least favorite issues. Since he took office, the number of illegal border crossings has skyrocketed, from 73,944 in December 2020 just before he took office to 302,034 last December, and governors and mayors from as far away as New York and Illinois have sounded the alarm about the resulting strain on their communities.
According to a CBS News-YouGov poll last month, 45 percent of Americans now view the situation at the border as a “crisis,” an increase of eight percentage points from last spring, and another 30 percent consider it “very serious.” A poll released Wednesday by PBS NewsHour, NPR and Marist found that only 29 percent of Americans support Mr. Biden’s leadership on the issue, while a growing number of Democrats and independents are voicing their concerns.
For purely political reasons, Mr. Biden would likely never trump his challenger among voters who have taken a strong interest in illegal immigration since he led crowds chanting “Build the Wall” in 2016.
But in terms of re-election strategy, Democratic activists believed that Mr. Biden needed to prevent immigration from denting his support among swing voters alarmed by the influx of illegal migrants without angering progressives disappointed that he didn’t do more had to achieve a reversal of Trump-era policies.
It was a measure of how much the politics of the issue has changed in recent years that Mr. Biden embraced the bipartisan deal negotiated by Senators James Lankford, Republican of Oklahoma; Christopher S. Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut; and Arizona Independent Democrat Kyrsten Sinema.
The legislation would have tightened rules for asylum seekers, expanded detention facilities, hired more border agents, sped up the process for returning unskilled migrants and even temporarily closed the border during peak periods. But it contained none of the basic provisions that Democrats have long demanded in comprehensive immigration legislation, such as a path to citizenship for those already here or protections for younger immigrants brought to the country as children.
Mr. Trump made clear that he saw the deal not as a solution but as a threat to his bid to win back office. “This bill is a great gift to Democrats and a death wish for the Republican Party,” he wrote on social media this week. “It takes the TERRIBLE JOB that the Democrats have done on immigration and the border, absolves it, and puts it all squarely on the shoulders of the Republicans. “Don’t be stupid!!!”
The White House wasted no time in reframing the issue, as Mr. Trump, an obstructionist, sought to intimidate Republicans into a deal backed by conservative institutions, including the Border Patrol union, which Mr. Trump previously supported had. “Will the House GOP vote with the Border Patrol to secure the border or with Donald Trump for more fentanyl?” the White House asked in a memo to reporters.
Mr. Trump scoffed at the idea that Mr. Biden could shift blame after three years of failing to secure the border.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times
The change was welcome for Democrats given a close election.
“Until recently, the border was almost entirely President Biden’s problem,” said Geoffrey Garin, a Democratic pollster. “But now, by blocking tough, bipartisan border laws, Republicans have made this their problem too.”
He added: “The fact that President Biden can now say that he was prepared to sign and enforce the strongest border law in history, but Republicans blocked it at Trump’s behest, puts Biden in a much better position in the immigration debate.” than before.” ”
Margie Omero, another Democratic strategist, said voters will understand which side actually wants to get something done. “Joe Biden and the Democrats in Congress are working on solutions,” she said. “The Republican Party routinely blocks our major challenges and scores points politically.”
But critics of Mr. Biden doubt that he can shift blame on himself after so long. For much of his presidency, the president and his allies refused to even acknowledge that there was a crisis, only to switch gears and say that there was one and that it was Mr. Trump’s fault.
“It seems absurd to me on its face,” said Mark S. Krikorian, the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies and a leading voice for tougher policies. “Obviously the Biden supporters are going to cling to it, and obviously the Trump supporters are going to laugh at it. The question is whether the people in the middle will buy it or not. I find it hard to believe that anyone would believe it. After three years?”
Scott Jennings, a Republican strategist, called it “a blatantly cynical ploy” that won’t work. “He must really think voters are stupid and want to convince them that Republicans are somehow to blame after three years of his policies,” Jennings said. “No one believes Joe Biden wants to ‘get tough’ on the border. Please. His government has been arguing for three years that the border is secure. What has changed? Oh. It’s election time.”
Elections are, of course, about narratives. For three years, Republicans had a clear line when it came to the border — Mr. Biden either intentionally or incompetently opened the floodgates. Now the president has a counter-narrative to offer — that whatever may have happened before, he at least wanted to solve the problem and Mr. Trump failed to do so. Which of these is more convincing will become clear over the next nine months.
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2024-02-07 18:05:21
www.nytimes.com
