Since Vice President Kamala Harris’ ascension to the top of the Democratic ticket, a careful truce has settled in place between centrist, liberal and progressive Democrats.
Perhaps no issue is more emblematic of this party unity than the thorny topic Democrats have long hoped to avoid: the politics of immigration. At the Democratic National Convention, Harris and the speakers who addressed the nation made clear that the Democratic Party of 2024 is moving right, toward the political center, when it comes to how they talk about immigrants, migration and security at the southern border.
That’s partially out of a need to appeal to moderate, swing and independent voters in the various battleground states that will decide the 2024 election. But it’s also a recognition of the very different national environment Democrats are operating in. Americans have turned much more negative in their thinking about immigration and border security.
Presidential candidates pivoting to the middle on key issues ahead of a general election is unsurprising. What is surprising is that, on immigration, the Harris campaign is doing so without facing much opposition from liberal politicians. Progressive activists and advocates say that truce will likely hold — at least until after Donald Trump is defeated and a more receptive President Kamala Harris is elected.
Harris previewed her new vision, and the Democratic Party’s new direction, during her acceptance speech when she promised to “bring back the bipartisan border security bill that (Trump) killed.” That bill, negotiated earlier this year by Biden and a bipartisan group of senators, would have put $20 billion toward new security measures at the border and imposed new, more restrictionist policies toward asylum seekers and other migrants.
Harris’ embrace of the bill is a major signal for how her administration would deal with immigration. It’s a palatable balance for now but one that may not be sustainable in the longer term. For some progressives, the party’s embrace of the border bill is worrying because it marked a departure from the way Democrats have traditionally dealt with immigration and border politics.
But elections are binary choices. Right now, Harris is triangulating a position that responds to real-world factors: the images of people crossing the border, the overwhelmed border communities dealing with constant flux, Republicans politicizing the issue and demonizing migrants, and public opinion turning away from the pro-immigrant movement.
The RNC and DNC offered “a very clear difference on how both parties and candidates are speaking about immigration,” Yadira Sanchez, executive director of the progressive group Poder Latinx, told me. One convention was a rally in favor of mass deportations and used “the border and immigrants themselves as scapegoats to spread hate and xenophobia around the border crisis,” Sanchez said. The other convention presented their candidate as the daughter of immigrants, who honors the country’s immigrant past while wanting to crack down on transnational gangs.
“Right now, the assignment is very clear,” Vanessa Cárdenas, the executive director of the pro-immigration reform group America’s Voice, said. “We have to make sure that Trump is defeated, and in February 2025, we can have a conversation about what kind of reforms we need to make.”
Christian Paz is a columnist for Vox.com.
