Democrats Need To Stay Focused On The Economy
While the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia is a crime that deserves attention and public pressure, Democrats have Trump on the ropes on the economy and can't let up.
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A person doesn’t have to watch Fox News or Newsmax for long to get the idea about what Trump and Republicans want to be talking about. Trump and his propagandistic media want the conversation to be about immigration.
When they discuss the case of illegally abducted legal resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia, they frame it as being tough on crime and immigration, and the right wants to have the Garcia conversation framed around immigration all day long every single day.
It is possible for Democrats to walk and chew gum at the same time, but what some elites within the Democratic Party are doing is troubling and is starting to feel like a repeat of some of the mistakes that cost the party elections in 2022 and 2024.
Some Democrats are beginning to argue that the “rule of law” should be at the center of the conversation. These Democrats frame the Abrego Garcia conversation as a rule of law issue, which sounds intellectual, and I’m sure makes them feel good, but it doesn’t resonate with voters, and this country is in a crisis and needs Democrats to regain power as soon as possible.
How do we already know that this message doesn’t work with voters?
Democrats tried it from 2021-2024, and they lost.
Donald Trump was indicted federally and in multiple states, and it didn’t matter. Trump told voters what he would do to the rule of law in this country if he were elected, and he won.
The problem with the rule of law issue is that Democrats are raising a problem that they can’t solve, so even when the American people agree on the rule of law issue, Democrats only say that the answer is the courts. Trump is ignoring court orders, and Democrats have responded with a political equivalent of an emoji shrug, because there is nothing that they can do to fix it.
What the American people need is for Democrats to win the House, and the path to winning the House runs through inflation and the economy.
Going back to Robert Mueller, Democrats have been told over and over again that the rule of law will save the country.
The argument that should be being made is that the Trump administration cares so little about the lives of people legally living in this country that they are taking away your jobs, making everything more expensive, trying to steal money from the programs that you pay into and count on, and they will even make people disappear and them to El Salvador and claim that they can’t be brought back.
It is all part of the same thread of not caring about people.
The biggest mistake that Democrats could make would be to have some intellectual conversation about the rule of law when the real conversation is about how Donald Trump and the Republican Party are doing things to make your life worse, and they don’t care.
The solution to the rule of law crisis is to take away power from Trump and his party. A loss of Trump's power can only occur if the American people vote for Democratic candidates in 2026.
Trump’s power grab depends on having total control of Congress, so that there is no check on the Executive Branch.
The path to Democratic victory and neutralizing the Trump presidency runs through voter outrage over the economy and inflation. Getting sidetracked and letting any other issue dominate plays into Trump’s hands and only helps the Republican Party.
Democrats can talk about Abrego Garcia in terms of the bigger picture of what this means for all people in the United States and how it is a piece of Donald Trump’s inability to see anyone else in the country or their needs unless they are rich like him.
What do you think? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
You have an argument with receipts. However I respectfully disagree. The Democrats do need to talk economy but not exclusively or even primarily. The economy will tell its own story. Aided by the disgust and horror of conservative economists.
The human rights story of very dubious individuals representing themselves as ICE agents taking people off the streets, including lawful residents and American citizens, is the story of the bedrock of our nation. It actually seems to be spurring a change in momentum for democracy.
The New Republic’s Alex Shepard disagrees with you, pointing out how Trump’s disregard of the order to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return and the circumstances behind it are hurting him:
https://newrepublic.com/article/194127/kilmar-abrego-garcia-democrats-trump-immigrants
“For one thing, outrage over Garcia’s case has been growing for weeks and is being felt across the country—as Grassley’s disastrous town hall testifies. For another, polling suggests that this outrage is helping to destroy the one policy that Trump is still polling well in: immigration.
Even polls that show voters broadly favoring Trump’s approach to immigration show that the public is furious about his handling of cases like Garcia’s. Fifty-six percent of respondents to a late March Reuters/Ipsos poll said that the administration should not “keep deporting people despite a court order to stop,” with only 40 percent agreeing it should keep doing so. Nearly every poll tracking the administration’s refusal to obey with court orders stopping deportation shows something similar: Voters really do not like it when Trump ignores court orders. And the issue is bringing down overall support for his approach to immigration.
This isn’t a trap, in other words. If anything, it’s the opposite of a trap. For months, the Democrats have agonized over how to respond to Trump’s immigration policy. By refusing to obey court orders—including one from the Supreme Court—the Trump administration has handed them an opportunity on a silver platter. It’s a story that captures everything awful about the Trump administration: its lawlessness, its incompetence, its disregard for basic humanity. Speaking up for Garcia would be the right thing to do even if it wasn’t good politics. Thankfully for Democrats, it is.”
You can point out the harm of Trump’s economic policies AND his disregard for the rule of law, what you’re arguing is equivalent to ignoring a key stepping stone for authoritarianism to focus on just the economy.