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Just like in the ‘90s, Democrats are selling out their multiracial coalition and trading perceived short-term gains for the long-term suffering of the very communities that mobilized to put them in power.
As an organizer working on death penalty issues in 1994, I watched in horror as Democrats—led by then-U.S. President Bill Clinton—caved to Republican “tough on crime” rhetoric and passed the largest law enforcement bill in U.S. history—a move now widely seen as one of the most consequential legislative setbacks in modern times for people of color.
Today, as leader of a national immigrants’ rights advocacy organization, I am again horrified as Democrats ignore the lessons of that colossal moral and policy failure and double down on a misguided political strategy to outdo Republican extremism on immigration.
Democrats would be wise to avoid their past mistakes. Instead, President Joe Biden and his Senate counterparts recently adopted Republicans’ “tough on immigration” rhetoric in a failed bid to pass a sweeping border bill that would upend long-established asylum protections and resembles some of the worst government sanctioned cruelties we saw under former President Donald Trump.
Democrats are once again showing that they are willing to sell out communities of color to look “tough.”
Fortunately, it was always clear this bill would fail a second time when Democrats put it up for a vote again in May. Still, some of its worst provisions were implemented with President Biden’s subsequent asylum executive order. The long-term consequences of the Democratic Party embracing this cruel approach for political expediency could cause lasting damage for decades.
The Clinton-era crime bill—championed in Congress by then-Senator Joe Biden—should offer Democrats a clear warning about legislating out of fear for a perceived political gain. Billed as an answer for a society grappling with addiction, poverty, and inequality, it instead devastated Black and brown communities, helping to drive mass incarceration, with no significant reduction in crime. Thirty years after the bill’s passage, policymakers across the political spectrum have disavowed the bill’s punitive approach. Many of these unlikely partners have become allies on many justice reform issues, including Trump’s First Step Act.
Like the crime bill, we know that the bipartisan border bill’s “tough” measures are not real solutions to our overwhelmed and severely outdated immigration system. We know this because the U.S. has already squandered billions of taxpayer dollars in the pursuit of deadly deterrence strategies and bolstering border enforcement. After decades of misdirecting investments into hardening the border, including four dystopian years of chaos under Trump, the data shows that this approach does not work.
While this border bill would not help solve our problems, its consequences—even of just propping it up with its accompanying anti-immigrant rhetoric—will almost certainly fall disproportionately on Black and brown people. Democrats are once again showing that they are willing to sell out communities of color to look “tough.”
Let’s not forget that Biden and Democrats won in 2020 with the largest multiracial, multigenerational coalition this country has ever seen. And yet, just like in the ‘90s, Democrats are selling out this coalition, trading perceived short-term gains for the long-term suffering of the very communities that mobilized to put them in power.
History will not be kind to such choices.
That’s why, much like the crime bill debate of the ‘90s, many diverse constituents are ringing the alarm bell on this disconnect. For instance, as the Libertarian Cato Institute has argued, “Allowing immigrants to arrive legally is [Biden’s] only chance to break out of a decade of failed immigration deals.” Similarly, business leaders concerned with worker shortages, as well as faith and civic leaders, have joined the calls for an approach that welcomes the people our communities and economy need.
Immigrants are vital to the success of our communities and shared future. There is no lack of support for a humane and orderly immigration system that welcomes people in need. What is lacking is courage and the political will to enact real solutions.
Following the collapse of the border bill earlier this year, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) lamented—apparently without irony—that “too many Republicans succumbed to the ministrations of Donald Trump” in rejecting the bill. Either way, he gloated, Democrats win.
The tragic fact is that it is Democrats who are succumbing to Trump, just as Republicans have done now for years. In that sad reality, we all lose.
Because the interests of white working-class voters are more aligned with the economic and governmental policies espoused by Democrats, the party never should have lost their support; but it did.
After Barack Obama’s decisive victory in 2008, Democratic Party strategists fell under the sway of the notion that the future of their party’s dominance was insured because, as they put it, “demographics are destiny.”
Obama had performed well among a wide range of groups, but what captured the strategists’ attention was that he had won decisively among young voters, Black, Latino, and Asian American voters, and college educated women. Because these groups were growing in their percentage of the overall electorate, the strategists decided that Democrats would continue to win elections well into the future if they focused on the issues they determined would most appeal to these voters. Hence the phrase “demographics are destiny.”
They referred to their winning cohort as “the Obama coalition,” and in the years that followed the issues they elevated and their extensive voter outreach efforts were directed largely at cultivating and keeping that coalition together. In the process, they appeared to abandon outreach to a substantial number of other constituencies, especially white working-class voters, leaving the field wide open to their Republican opponents.
By viewing Black, Latino, and Asian American voters as monoliths, Democrats may be ignoring the complex composition of these groups.
Back in 2008-2009, the U.S. was reeling from the trauma of the Great Recession. Republicans, in an effort to deflect from their responsibility for the economic collapse, sought instead to exploit white voters’ feelings of unease and abandonment. The GOP preyed on their resentment and fears using racism and xenophobia as their weapons of choice. This strategy was embodied in the “birther movement” (Obama’s not one of us) and the “Tea Party” (“Democrats’ ideas about government don’t work for you. They only benefit ‘them’”—meaning Blacks, the poor, and immigrants).
In the next three elections, Democrats, relying on their new strategy of mobilizing their “Obama coalition” base, lost over 1,400 state and federal seats, giving Republicans control of both houses of Congress and the majority of governorships and state legislatures. One might have thought that Democrats would have learned from this comeuppance. Sadly, they did not.
Shortly after the 2014 midterms, I was at a meeting of the Democratic Party’s executive committee when the party’s pollster gave an upbeat presentation of what had been a stunning number of nationwide defeats. He claimed that there was good news from 2014: Democrats had kept their coalition together, winning the youth, Black, Latino, Asian, and educated women’s votes. Adding that “we just didn’t win enough of them,” he recommended that the party commit more resources to getting more of these groups out to vote in future elections.
At one point, I objected saying that he was ignoring white ethnic voters in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin. These working-class voters had always been Democrats and their rights, prosperity, and futures were being damaged by Republicans. Because Democrats had always had their interests at heart and they had been central to our victories. I argued that we needed to pay attention to their needs. His response startled me. “We’re not going to throw money away on people who are never going to vote for us.” I replied that it’s not “either/or.” We can be both attentive to the concerns of our new coalition, while also keeping in mind the needs of our old coalition partners. When that “both/and” approach was dismissed, I countered that if that was how we would operate we would never be a majoritarian party and we were going to be handing these voters to Republicans on a silver platter. Enter Donald Trump in 2016.
As a candidate, Joe Biden understood the idea of both/and, directing his efforts to winning back these voters. But the apparatus of the party and its paid consultants have not followed suit, with little or no resources being devoted to outreach to white working-class voters and even less to understanding their values and needs.
We have polled these communities and in 2001, my brother John and I published a book based on our findings, What Ethnic Americans Really Think. We found that white ethnic voters were largely progressive in their attitudes toward government and economic policy, but had more nuanced feelings about what are called social issues. They supported federal funding for education, healthcare, and job creation; these were their priority issues. And they were pro-union and for racial equality. They were, however, conflicted about abortion and gay rights. A generation earlier, then President Bill Clinton had captured the general values of these white working-class voters with his slogan “family, community, and opportunity.”
Because the interests of white working-class voters are more aligned with the economic and governmental policies espoused by Democrats, the party never should have lost their support. But it did. Democrats fell into the trap Republicans set for them by focusing their electioneering almost exclusively on combating the bigoted and intolerant Republican messages and ignoring the economic angst and feelings of abandonment of white voters. When Democrats should be attending to both.
Now polls are showing that Democrats may be at risk of losing even some components of the “Obama coalition.” By viewing Black, Latino, and Asian American voters as monoliths, Democrats may be ignoring the complex composition of these groups. For example, studies show that upwards of 15% of Black voters are African immigrants and a large number of Latino voters are more recent immigrants are as well. They are from Venezuela, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republican, Nigeria, or East Africa. Their attitudes and values are more in line with those of the ethnic immigrants who came from Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Democratic strategists need to adjust their focus or else risk losing their support.
One more thought: My generation grew up with a strong attachment to party ID. Political parties were organizations to which you belonged. Today, given the weaknesses of the party organizations, being a Democrat or a Republican means nothing more than being on an email or phone-banking list. And the only time one hears from either party is when they call or write for money or urge you to vote. As a result, party ID has suffered—and this is especially true for young voters and recent immigrants. That’s why the numbers of independents and swing voters have increased. It’s why Donald Trump found it so easy to topple the Republican Party leadership and why Democrats may have trouble winning elections holding onto their “demographics are destiny” mantra.
Today, despite the horrors of genocide in Gaza, we must never forget that we retain the capacity to make change.
Two seemingly unrelated events of the last week have caused me to reflect on the long journey we’ve taken to Arab American empowerment. The first was the March 27 death of former Senator Joseph Lieberman. This was followed by the 28th anniversary of the tragic death of former Secretary of Commerce Ronald Brown on April 3.
Arab Americans were provided the opportunity to enter U.S. politics as an organized community in the 1984 and 1988 presidential campaigns of Jesse Jackson. Because it was the first campaign to welcome Arab Americans by name, the community enthusiastically responded. We registered new voters, organized to elect a record number of delegates to the national convention (over 80, when in previous years there had never been more than a handful), with many hundreds more participating in state party conventions and passing Palestinian statehood resolutions in 10 states.
Despite our successes, or more likely due to them, the resistance by pro-Israel groups to our involvement increased dramatically. They smeared us and pressured candidates and elected officials to reject our support. In 1984, for example, the presidential campaign of Walter Mondale returned Arab American contributions and in 1998, the Michael Dukakis campaign rejected an endorsement from Arab American Democrats.
Change is never easy and never comes by itself, it requires hard work and allies.
After the 1988 campaign, as Ron Brown was set to begin his chairmanship of the Democratic Party, he pledged to end this exclusion. His first meeting as chair was with me, saying he wanted to send the message that Arab Americans had a home in the Democratic Party. As he introduced me to key staff, he announced to all that this was a new day for Arab Americans in the party. And it was.
A few months later he became the first party chair to address an Arab American convention. One of his staff told me that before coming into our meeting he had an “emergency coffee” with a major pro-Israel donor who told him, “if you even walk into that room, I’ll pull my donations and get others to join me.” I asked Brown what he was going to do. He said, “I’m going to speak to Arab Americans.”
The problems we faced didn’t end. Pressure was placed on other candidates and elected officials on the local levels to exclude Arab Americans—and many did. By the time we got to the 1992 Democratic Convention, we were frustrated by the block we encountered in trying to work with the Clinton campaign.
At the convention, I was approached by David Ifshin who served both as legal counsel to AIPAC and as an official in the Clinton campaign. He said to me, “I understand Arab Americans are trying to get into the campaign.” He then used an obscene expletive saying there was no place for us and we ought to go elsewhere.
I was angered and told Ron Brown what had just occurred. He told me he’d been working on it but that he too had difficulty breaking through, as there were other officials committed to blocking our entry. He suggested that I also try other routes.
As I had an upcoming meeting scheduled with Senator Lieberman to discuss another matter, I thought I’d also tell him about my encounter with Ifshin. I knew the Senator and I didn’t agree on much, but I had found him to be thoughtful and open to dialogue. I was right. He was so outraged by the Ifshin story that he promptly called the Clinton campaign headquarters and demanded that they meet with Arab Americans and invite them to play a role in the campaign. The next day we were invited to meet and find our place in the campaign. During the next few months, we demonstrated our capacity to work and were never again excluded from any Democratic presidential campaign.
When Bill Clinton entered the White House, he welcomed us in and gave us a seat at the table, providing Arab Americans with unprecedented access and opportunities to engage in policy discussions on a range of foreign and domestic policy concerns.
Along the way, at times I despaired of ever seeing Arab Americans overcome the objections of those who wanted to exclude us from participating in the political mainstream. At one point I told Jesse Jackson that I was ready to quit. He looked at me sternly and said, “Never do that, because it’s exactly what your enemies want you to do. What they’re most afraid of is that you’ll stick around and fight.” That’s exactly what we’ve done, and today, despite the horrors of genocide in Gaza, we must never forget that we retain the capacity to make change. Look at what’s been done: amazingly diverse mass mobilizations calling for a cease-fire and questioning U.S. arms for Israel; over 150 cities calling for an end to the Israeli war; a remarkable national movement demonstrating to President Joe Biden that there will be electoral consequences to his policies; and a growing drift of public opinion in an anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian direction.
Change is never easy and never comes by itself, it requires hard work and allies. That’s what it took to get to where we are today. And that’s what today’s Arab American activists are doing to challenge the U.S.’ failed policies toward the Palestinian people.