Vice president and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris rallied thousands of supporters in Atlanta, Georgia, on Tuesday, where she defended her support for harsher immigration and border enforcement policies. Harris compared her record to Donald Trump’s and blamed the Republican presidential nominee for tanking a bipartisan bill that would have further militarized the southern border. Vice President Kamala Harris: “Our administration worked on the most significant border security bill in decades. Some of the most conservative Republicans in Washington, D.C., supported the bill. Even the Border Patrol endorsed it. It was all set to pass, but at the last minute, Trump directed his allies in the Senate to vote it down.” Supporters: “Boo!”  Vice President Kamala Harris: “Right.” Harris has touted recent endorsements by more than a dozen mayors in Arizona, a border state, including that of Republican John Giles of Mesa, who praised Harris’ backing of the failed bipartisan bill. Immigration advocates say the legislation would have further eroded the rights of asylum seekers.
  • mozz@mbin.grits.dev
    1024·
    2 months ago

    Hello! Okay so, one, she didn’t say that. The quote was:

    “Our administration worked on the most significant border security bill in decades. Some of the most conservative Republicans in Washington, D.C., supported the bill. Even the Border Patrol endorsed it. It was all set to pass, but at the last minute, Trump directed his allies in the Senate to vote it down.”

    There’s also a quote that’s a little closer, from this pretty good article about the rally where this all happened:

    “Donald Trump does not care about border security — he only cares about himself,” Harris said. “As president, I will bring back the border security bill that Donald Trump killed, and I will sign it into law, and show Donald Trump what real leadership looks like," she said.

    So, she’s not claiming she’s tougher on border policy than Trump is, but it is fair to say she is pivoting to a “border security” narrative. In order to explain why she wants to pass a border bill, it is necessary to explain what is actually going on at the border. Because our media is shit, almost no one knows; I suspect she’s pivoting to “border security” as a narrative because she’s being attacked from the right on it, and because something genuinely does need to be done, and she wants to lay the groundwork for making the attempt. But anyway. What is happening is that there are two big problems in immigration in this country:

    1. There’s a huge backlog of asylum / deportation cases which means people stay in custody in racist and oppressive overcrowded prisons
    2. We’re rate limiting the people coming into the country (see point #1), which means a lot of asylum seekers who are trying to do it legally wind up waiting for months (maybe years now, IDK) on the other side of the Mexican border, basically just living in a big, dangerous, squalid, crime-ridden open-air field with no facilities for life, and no job, no medical care for anyone no matter how young or old, it’s fuckin dangerous

    There’s also a problem that the whole agency in charge of the border police is for the most part made of racist people, but that one is unfixable unless Harris can fire the whole agency en masse and then find 40,000 people who want to be immigration police who are not racist. So, unfixable. The other two problems do have legislative solutions, but the Republicans blocked anything Biden did, even when he tried promising to do some cruel or racist things as a compromise in order to get them to also agree to some badly needed things (mostly, increasing ICE funding so they can at least house the people they have in better conditions, and increasing the number of judges to process cases so people don’t wait for a year before their case is heard).

    And, any time a Democrat tries to do anything about any of this, e.g. reducing the rate of people allowed to come across the border, or increasing the number of judges to reduce the backlog, or increasing funding for ICE, everyone on the left as far as I can tell thinks they’re just being cruel on purpose for no reason and gets really mad.

    So, OP: What should the Democrats do? You are (edit angry) attacking them because they are talking about border security and trying to fix this mess. What should their messaging be instead (since you seem angry about this particular messaging, which again, you kind of have a point about “tough on the border” being a callous message in addition to feeding into the false media narrative)? And, what their legislative action?

    • very_well_lost@lemmy.worldEnglish
      201·
      2 months ago

      No, no, you’re wrong! The media bias fact checker bot gave it a credibility rating of “high”, so the headline must be right!

      /s

    • kevindqc@lemmy.world
      21·
      2 months ago

      Can anyone remember the bill that Trump tanked? I tried to look it up but I guess journalists didn’t want to give the name of or number of the bill?

      I found HR 815 on one, but that’s a bill that became law, so probably a mistake?

      • dhork@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        2 months ago

        The bill started in the Senate and got killed there, so look for a Senate number. I don’t think it ever made it to the House.

    • return2ozma@lemmy.worldOP
      1314·
      2 months ago

      Not angry, just sharing valid news articles that are being brought up by the Right also. Your explanations and defense of Harris are appreciated Mozz.

      • mozz@mbin.grits.dev
        182·
        2 months ago

        I had a feeling you wouldn’t have an answer for what her messaging should be / what she should do instead.

        Honestly, like I say, I do sort of agree that it’s off-putting and misleading messaging, and that maybe it would be better to make some sort of attempt to communicate what’s actually going on and what the Democrats have been trying to do (since our media seems uninterested in doing that fairly important thing.) But, it is complex. Maybe it is right to just talk “border security”, lean into that, and if people get confused but still vote for her, then whatever it is fine.

        But yes it’s a bunch of shit to attack her with headlines that claim she said something she never said. IDK if she will make a genuine attempt to fix the border, but Biden did make that genuine attempt, and you attacked him with precisely the same messaging, so I think it’s fair to call this one bad faith also.

        (Edit: Also I see what you meant about “angry”; I went back in fixed it in my message)

        • return2ozma@lemmy.worldOP
          819·
          2 months ago

          I had a feeling you wouldn’t have an answer for what her messaging should be / what she should do instead.

          There’s nothing more she could say. This shithole country is too damn conservative already. The rest of the world is leaving us behind.