Horses and Water

You can show politicians an election outcome, but you can't make them understand it

The people have spoken and in multiple states, elected officials are already planning to ignore them. Welcome to politics in America, where your vote may count numerically but not always philosophically. In poll after poll after endless poll, voters made crystal clear that immigration and securing the border was their most vital concern for the new administration. And in state after state after state, governors are turning a deaf ear. Worse, they are working to countermand the citizens whose interests they are sworn to represent and protect.  

President-elect Trump wanted to seal the border during his first term and given a second round in the Oval Office, has pledged to undertake what he calls the “largest deportation effort in American history,” with the goal of expelling as many 13 million illegal immigrants. The American Immigration Council, which opposes the plan, says this will cost more than $300 billion. But inaction also carries a cost and the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which supports the Trump plan, says that bill adds up to $150 billion per year.

I was not a math major, but by these figures, the deportation would pay for itself in two years. And there would be no more horrific crime stories to report. Or to ignore, depending on which of the two narratives you prefer. It is not likely that every single illegal who entered during the Biden years will be found, mostly because no one is sure exactly how many there are, but that’s not the point.

On one side is an incoming administration that heard what voters said and is prioritizing the well-being of tax-paying citizens over that of people who introduced themselves to the nation by breaking its laws. When people point to studies claiming that illegals commit fewer crimes than the native-born, they are lying. Every single unlawful entry is a crime. One hundred percent of them. Meanwhile, on the other side, are politicians who don’t care about that, either.

In Massachusetts, Maura Healy is falling on straw man rhetoric of the state’s need “to protect our citizens, to protect our residents, and protect our states,” none of which is accomplished when the governor prioritizes partisan interests and puts illegals ahead of citizens, residents, and the state. In Illinois, JB Pritzker vows that Trump will have to “come through me” to address this issue, no idle threat considering the governor’s bulk. And in Washington, Governor-elect Bob Ferguson – whose previous political life was as the state’s attorney general, where he sued the first Trump administration almost 100 times – plans more of the same.

The party is not determined to ignore just the will of a national majority but also that of an increasing number of its own voters. Multiple cities have decided that sanctuary status may sound good on a bumper sticker but it looks bad in application, and they are cooperating with ICE in reporting the undocumented. Other places have been scaling back the level of taxpayer-funded support that is doled out. And even the incumbent administration has re-adopted some Trump-era policies it previously erased through executive orders.

Yet in the usual places, the usual suspects are doing the usual things and acting as if something beyond the usual results will follow. This speaks to a particular conceit among the elected – the hubris that comes with never having to face the consequences of living under one’s policy preferences. On the rare occasion when this happens, the change in outlook is almost instant.

Last year, a state Democratic Party official in Minnesota who previously pushed for defunding the police immediately pivoted to calling for tougher crime laws after being carjacked in her driveway. That fits with Irving Kristol’s quote about the political conversions that sometimes follow when a liberal is mugged by reality, though he probably did not mean it quite so literally. Since so few officeholders are personally affected by their actions, they see little reason to change their views.

This is doubly so when a policy initiative is pushed by Donald Trump. After years of opposition, Kamala Harris became a border wall advocate after her campaign team finally paid attention to public discontent. Whether she would have walked the talk is something we will never know, but it is amusing how much of the left’s policy calculus is dictated by reflexively adopting the opposite of a Trumpian position. He could say sunshine is a wonderful thing and one part of the left would accuse him of increasing the public’s risk of skin cancer and another part would find some aggrieved community hobbled by a sunlight deficit.

The ability to remain tone deaf to ideas outside the left’s echo chamber would be impressive if it were not so harmful. While much of the focus has been on the big cities, unfettered immigration is impacting smalltown America, too. Communities in Indiana, Ohio, Nebraska, Alabama, and elsewhere are overwhelmed by the sudden influx of illegals, and the impact on local school systems, law enforcement, and housing markets. But living in certain governor’s mansions includes the luxury of ignoring the hamlets, burgs, villages, and crossroads struggling to cope.    

Cliches, stereotypes, and proverbs resonate because they are always grounded in an element of truth. The title of this article speaks to this reality of how one can lead a politician to a problem and various solutions, but one cannot make that politician act on or even care about the problem. It is the opposite of how public service is supposed to work. Nothing will change so long as voters in places like Massachusetts, Illinois, Washington, and elsewhere put partisan allegiance and political gamesmanship above their individual self-interest. And it’s hard to feel sympathy for people who, unlike their governors, feel and pay for the consequences of their actions.