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state of the union
Biden and Democrats Should Not Try to Match Trump and GOP's Cruelty on the Border
It would be horrible and unethical even if framing immigration policy this way was a vote winner for Democrats, but it isn’t.
Mar 18, 2024
It’s now all-but confirmed: the 2024 US election will be a rematch between Joe Biden and former president/insurrectionist Donald Trump.
In truth, it has long been clear that would be the case. After all, some of the Supreme Court’s recent decisions in Trump’s favour make it increasingly unlikely that his legal troubles, which include numerous criminal indictments, will hamper his bid to return to the White House.
General election season is well and truly here. And it arrived just in time for last week’s State of the Union address (SOTU), in which Biden tried to lay out all the ways he is different from Trump.
The headlines since make it clear the consensus of the American punditocracy is he did so very effectively. I don’t disagree. Biden gave an energetic, passionate speech and contrasted himself with Trump numerous times.
“My predecessor and some of you here seek to bury the truth of January 6”, he stated plainly and provocatively. “I will not do that.”
At the same time, however, Biden seemed to want to have it both ways on immigration, representing himself (not inaccurately) as tough on border policy while also claiming to be more humane than Trump.
He pointedly described how he was ready to sign a tough, bipartisan border security bill that would give Republicans essentially everything they want. But this bill was tanked in the House of Representatives by speaker Mike Johnson, a right-wing Christian, who refused to bring it to a vote because Trump and the Republicans generally are running their campaign on border issues by stirring up racist fears of migrants.
Yes, there have been unusually large numbers of unsanctioned crossings documented at America’s southern border in recent months. But the Republicans are selling a demonstrably false narrative that those crossing are responsible for a wave of horrific violent and sexual crimes. I want to be very clear, that narrative is itself false, and there’s more to it – these supposed crimes are then blamed on Biden’s supposedly weak border policies, in an insidious sort of one-two punch.
What’s worse, the signs are that this deceptive, racist tactic may work – a significant plurality of Americans, 28%, currently see immigration as the country’s biggest problem, according to a Gallup poll.
Republicans know this. And they would love to make the 2024 presidential election about immigration rather than reproductive justice, which is a losing issue for them.
And while Democratic candidates can’t avoid the issue of immigration altogether, they need to be very careful about how they talk about it. They must avoid playing into the Republican narrative that puts Black and brown people – both American citizens and undocumented immigrants – in danger of violence.
Unfortunately, Democrats often allow Republicans to frame their debates, and that failure has both a high political cost and a high human cost. With his border security bill and his discussion of it during his SOTU address, Biden called the Republicans’ bluff, to be sure, but he did so on their terms.
No matter how far Biden leans into their phoney fears and draconian prescriptions, Republicans will continue to paint him as “weak” and “soft” on the issue. There is no winning for a Democrat here – except by refusing to play the game.
This approach from the Republicans was evident in their official response to the SOTU, delivered by Katie Britt, a senator from Alabama whose over-the-top fear-mongering about migrants and sex-trafficking was simply bonkers.
As regular readers of openDemocracy are likely aware, too often those who claim to be anti-trafficking advocates are moved by inflammatory disinformation, or are themselves creators and purveyors of this disinformation. Take, for example, the QAnon conspiracy theory that a cabal of liberal and Hollywood ‘elites’ are organising the trafficking of children for sexual abuse and other nefarious purposes. In the US in particular, many anti-trafficking efforts are hyper-focused on sex-trafficking and run by conservative Christians whose ultimate goals include blanket bans on sex work and pornography, in addition to banning abortion and stripping rights from members of the LGBTQ+ community.
The Christian Right’s paternalistic efforts in this area, then, are clearly not about defending individual bodily autonomy for vulnerable people. Instead, they represent a longstanding authoritarian pattern involving the externalisation of community anxieties in a framework that requires both ‘victims’ to be saved and a scapegoated group of ‘villains’ to blame.
This dynamic, which here in America is deeply rooted in white supremacy and often focused on ‘protecting’ (white) women and children, oozed from Britt’s response to the SOTU, in which the senator misleadingly invoked an anecdote about a woman supposedly trafficked by drug cartels to back up her claim that “president Biden’s border crisis is a disgrace”.
The woman in question, Karla Jacinto, has now come forward to set the record straight, stating she was never trafficked by cartels or within the US, but was trafficked by a pimp in Mexico – from 2004 to 2008, when, wait for it, George W Bush was president.
Britt has become a national laughing stock due to the absurdly overwrought tone of her speech, but the racist invocation of “scary” migrants is deadly serious. For example, the US has a history of representing Black men as sexually aggressive, and this stereotype, along with concepts of ‘honour’ and white racial ‘purity,’ led to numerous lynchings, including the 1955 case of Emmett Till, who was brutally murdered in Mississippi after being accused of whistling at a white woman.
Today, we see echoes of the same dynamic in Trump’s rhetoric. He referred to Mexican migrants as “rapists” in 2016, and last year he asserted that undocumented immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country”.
Biden denounced that rhetoric explicitly during his SOTU speech, but, in an unscripted back-and-forth with MAGA representative Marjorie Taylor Green, he referred to a murder committed by “an illegal” – a phrasing he thankfully later regretted.
In the US, people of Latin American descent have been subjected to a surge in hate crimes in recent years. When Democrats adopt racist Republican framing about the border and immigration, they fuel that hatred.
That would be unethical even if doing so was a vote winner for Democrats, but it isn’t.
While Biden calling out Republican hypocrisy on the refusal to pass his border security bill was necessary given the bill’s existence, I hope his administration and campaign will think carefully about the way they frame these issues going forward, instead of trying to compete with the hate and fear-based politics of their Republican opponents.
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Retire the State of the Union
The annual ritual neither honestly describes the state of our nation, nor does it serve to unify us to confront the challenges we face.
Mar 11, 2024
President Joseph Biden faced heady tasks as he delivered this year’s State of the Union address to Congress. He had to confront concerns about his age, voter anxiety about the economy, the dysfunctional environment created by Republican hyper-partisanship, and the ongoing threat to our democratic processes posed by a feared replay of the January 6, 2021 insurrection.
As expected, commentators had differing views as to how successful Biden was at meeting the challenges before the country and his presidency, with partisan Democrats appearing to read from Biden campaign talking points and Republicans glibly finding fault with the president’s every word. An honest assessment, however, would suggest that Biden gave Democrats what they needed to campaign for his reelection, but did little to heal the partisan divide or advance any legislation currently blocked in Congress.
Given the magnitude of the domestic challenges that comprised the bulk of the president’s State of the Union address, it was strange that he chose to open and close his remarks with two foreign policy issues—both of which were dealt with quite unsatisfactorily.
If the Ukraine opening fell flat, the president’s closing treatment of Gaza hit with a thud.
He opened his remarks with dire warnings about Russia’s war on Ukraine, comparing the challenges this war poses to the West’s democracies with the situation in Europe in the lead up to World War II. At best, this was an extreme overstatement. Russia’s Vladimir Putin may be a bad man, but he is no Hitler and the war in Ukraine is most certainly not a threat to the U.S. and poses no serious challenge to any of Europe’s NATO countries. Russia has a particular historical grievance with regard to Ukraine, and while it has been important to defend that country’s territorial integrity, it can be done without exaggeration or making overblown, inaccurate historical comparisons. And the use of excessive rhetoric about how democracies are confronting authoritarianism is off-putting and more than a little disingenuous, since the European “democracies” in question were colonial powers in the 1940s and among the world’s worst violators of rights.
It’s been two years now that the president has been using Churchillian or Reaganesque flourish to describe his recreation of the Cold War conflict with Russia and China. It may sound good to some in his inner circle, but it isn’t registering with voters—with a significant percentage of both Democrats and Republicans not in support of sending more billions to fight a war in Ukraine.
If the Ukraine opening fell flat, the president’s closing treatment of Gaza hit with a thud. While Mr. Biden’s reelection effort will not be harmed by his support for Ukraine, results in some of this year’s early primaries are making it clear that his continued arming of Israel and refusal to condemn its genocidal policies in Gaza may cost him votes in November. As a result, he felt compelled to address the issue, but his approach was, at best, confusing. His problem: He tried to square a circle. On the one hand, he continues to pledge total support for Israel and its reputed “right to defend itself,” while attempting to temper this support by also calling on Israel to demonstrate more concern for Palestinian civilians—calls which Israel has repeatedly acknowledged but ignored for months.
Despite Biden noting Israel’s responsibility for the humanitarian crisis created in Gaza, instead of calling for a cease-fire and demanding that Israel pull back its forces, he pledged instead to build a floating port to bring needed supplies into Gaza.
For the most part, this proposal drew scorn. It was seen as unnecessary, since the problem of getting supplies into Gaza could be more easily solved by joining international calls for a cease-fire. Additionally, it has been noted that in the two months it would take to get the port operational, thousands of Palestinians will have died of starvation.
Final assessment: Regrettably I’m joining the camp of those who want to end this annual ritual. The State of the Union neither honestly describes the state of our nation, nor does it serve to unify us to confront the challenges we face. Rather it’s become a patently partisan affair complete with heckling or a campaign event with repeated and unnecessary applause. It does more to deepen the partisan divide than to unify the country to serve the common good. Seen in this light, President Biden’s address probably served him well with some in his party but did little to unify the nation.
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State of the Union: War and Genocide Are Still the American Way
Peace cannot be found in the endless military packages but in the corridors of diplomacy and peace talks, where dialogue and negotiation pave the way for lasting solutions.
Mar 09, 2024
President Biden’s State of the Union address made one thing clear: war, genocide, and militarism remains the Amercian way. From Gaza to Ukraine, from the Middle East to the borders of our own nation, the toll of violence from militarism is immeasurable. Will we ever see an end to the cycle of destruction fueled by capitalism and U.S. imperialism?
Firstly, let's address the white elephant in the war. Before the speech started, Democratic women leaders were shown wearing white in honor of women and feminism. But let's be very clear, whether it's women sending bombs or men, the result remains the same: women and children are being murdered, communities shattered, and futures erased. There's no feminism in complicity with war and genocide, nor is there honor in turning a blind eye to the cries of the oppressed who are very loudly asking us to quit sending the bombs that are murdering their people.
Biden started the speech with an appeal for more money to fund the War in Ukraine. Yet in the two years since Russia invaded Ukraine with over a hundred billion dollars spent and countless lives lost Ukrainians are no closer to peace. Peace cannot be found in the endless military packages but in the corridors of diplomacy and peace talks, where dialogue and negotiation pave the way for lasting solutions.
It's time to halt the flow of weapons to Israel or quit pretending to care about the lives of Palestinians.
He then moved on to taunt the need to protect democracy yet the White House and Congress continuously ignore the majority of the country who want an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, specifically a majority of Biden’s own voter base. A true democracy happens not just at the ballot box but beyond it. Yet, Biden chooses to ignore the very people who put him in office.
Along with “protecting democracy,” Biden also vowed to protect the environment. However, the contribution to militarism cannot be ignored. The U.S. military ranks as one of the largest consumers of oil globally, contributing significantly to greenhouse gas emissions. Instead of investing in renewable energy and supporting a just transition, precious resources are squandered to war and conflicts that ravage the planet and accelerate climate change.
Biden's support for Israel's genocide in Gaza and occupation of Palestine is a stain on the moral fabric of our nation. And he leaned into that support in his address. Using lies and unsubstantiated claims he attempted to legitimize Israel’s genocidal response to Oct. 7. However no matter how he tries to spin it, the death and destruction that innocent people are enduring on a daily basis—mostly women and children—cannot be justified in the name of political alliances or strategic interests. Nothing, absolutely nothing, justifies genocide and ethnic cleansing.
Biden made it clear that war, genocide, and militarism are all still on top of the U.S. agenda. This will cost us all dearly.
Biden’s latest response to Israel’s countless war crimes is to build a “temporary” port off the shores of Gaza to allow for humanitarian aid to enter the besieged land. But a temporary port does nothing to stop the permanent death and destruction from U.S. made bombs. It's time to halt the flow of weapons to Israel or quit pretending to care about the lives of Palestinians.
Biden made it clear that war, genocide, and militarism are all still on top of the U.S. agenda. This will cost us all dearly. He must heed the demands of the public: stop the bombs, stop the militarization of our borders, stop the inhumane blockades that are starving people to death. Many in the media have painted Biden’s speech as strong and positive but make no mistake—a country that relies on the death and destruction of others is a weak one.
We desperately need leaders who will prioritize diplomacy over destruction, compassion over conflict, and humanity over hubris. Only then can we truly claim to be a nation committed to justice, equality, and the pursuit of peace for all. Until then, we will continue to be a country committed to war and genocide and never find lasting peace.
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