Onstage, the Democrats considered themselves to be morally brave. It turned out that American people perceived a bunch of leaders who were utterly disconnected from the modern world.
During a June 2019 primary debate, nine of the party’s presidential candidates stood side by side and were asked to raise their hands if they supported decriminalizing unauthorized border crossings. Of them, just one remained motionless.
That scene still haunts the party six years later. It serves as both a stark reminder of the country’s dramatic shift in the opposite direction and a striking illustration of a leftward tilt in immigration policy that many well-known Democratic lawmakers and strategists now express significant remorse over.
For the first time since 2005, a majority of Americans—55 percent—told Gallup last year that they were in favor of reducing immigration, which is almost twice as many as in 2020. In addition to white voters, working-class Latinos, whose support Democrats have long courted with liberal border policies, are also in favor of a more severe approach to illegal immigration.
Representative Vicente Gonzalez of Texas, who witnessed Mr. Trump win every county in his district along the Mexican border, said that the Democratic Party should take note when the largest Latino district in the nation outside of Puerto Rico votes for him. For more than a century, this Democratic district has remained blue.
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