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Transcript:
Last week a commenter wanted me to know he was very disappointed in me, which obviously was quite upsetting for me. When a complete stranger says you’ve disappointed them, well, I probably don’t have to tell you how this affected me. I cried for a good hour before I could go back and read the rest of the comment.
Anyway, the source of the disappointment was because I talked about how the Democratic Party is very conservative, but I failed to qualify that with an explanation that they’re only conservative on immigration because “the electorate itself moved to the right on immigration since 9/11,” describing a Gallup poll that found the majority of Americans wanted to curb immigration in 2024 and a 2007 immigration reform bill that failed because of the right’s “xenophobia” and the left’s “purity-testing.”
I replied that I didn’t care why the Democrats have moved to the right over the years, because it had absolutely nothing to do with any points I made in my video, and also because it’s obviously not worth arguing with someone who makes such idiotic comments on a video where they aren’t even relevant. That said, I do want to take a little time today to talk about exactly why this comment is so stupid, because it DOES include some common misconceptions that are negatively impacting our political landscape.
First, some factual corrections. If you search for a Gallup poll on immigration from 2024, you will probably notice that all the top results say things like “Surge in U.S. Concern About Immigration Has Abated,” and “Immigration ranks low in American concerns: Gallup poll” and “Americans’ views on immigration hits a 5-year high in new poll.” That’s because a poll in 2024 DID find that 55% of Americans thought immigration should be decreased. Our commenter chose 2024 because that was an unusually high result: in 2023, the number was 41%. In 2025, it was 30%.
But of course, even that number does not prove the commenter’s assertion that Democrats moved to the right to meet their base. In 2024, that number was so high because 88% of REPUBLICANS said immigration should be decreased. Only 26% of Democrats and half of Independents agreed, and again, that single year was a decade-long high for that answer. So in fact, if the Democrats were interested in doing what their actual voters and even potential voters wanted, they would be pro-immigration.
Secondly, our commenter points to a 2007 immigration reform bill that failed, because Republicans hate immigrants AND because Democrats were “purity-testing.” He’s correct that the “Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007” did get attacked from both the left and the right, because it was a “compromise” between the Democrats and Republicans: more undocumented immigrants in the US would get a legal status, but they would essentially be a lower class and border enforcement would ramp up dramatically.
It’s not a coincidence that our commenter distilled criticism of the bill from Democrats as “purity-testing.” In the past few years, conservatives have successfully defined “purity testing” as a stupid thing that the Left does that causes them to fracture and lose, and the phrase is handily applied to any attempt Leftists make to agitate for progress. Criticizing a senator for supporting Israel’s genocide? Purity test. Not wanting to vote for a guy with swastika tattoos? Purity test.
It’s an easy way to dismiss criticism and shame someone for having standards, for doing anything other than “vote blue no matter who,” a tactic that benefits establishment Democrats who want to keep pushing to the right in order to serve their billionaire donors AND Republicans, who can then push even further right with abandon.
The Right’s success spreading an idea like “purity testing” is not new. In the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, Newt Gingrich set out to teach Republicans how to control the media narrative. He developed training materials that told them exactly what words to use and how to use them. He harnessed the power of talk radio to influence the middle class and stoke their anger, in his own words, “reshaping the entire nation through the news media” and he helped spread the idea of a “culture war” that did not actually exist.
In his now-famous 1990 memo “Language: A Key Mechanism of Control,” he lists words that all Republicans should use to define their opponents: “unionized bureaucracy,” “crisis,” “waste,” “corruption,” “anti-family,” “anti-child,” “welfare,” “they/them.” Sound familiar? That was 36 years ago.
In the decades since, Conservatives don’t just influence the media–they own it. Billionaires own newspapers and cable news outlets. They can push whatever propaganda they want, and most people will fall for it. This commenter has fallen for it. Why else would they misrepresent that Gallup poll to show the exact opposite of what it shows, which is that the Democratic base is largely supportive of immigration? Why else would they say that 20 years ago Democrats were “purity-testing” when pushing to make a bill endorsed by George W. Bush more progressive?
And by the way, yeah, Bush’s Bill died in 2007 but his immigration policies were picked up and strengthened by his successor, Barack Obama. How did that work out? Pretty well, for Donald Trump, as detailed in this recent piece by Chris Brennan for USA Today:
“Barack Obama had a plan for comprehensive immigration reform, a legislative goal that eluded his predecessor as president, George W. Bush. He would first persuade Republicans to trust him by aggressively enforcing America’s immigration laws.
“It was a trade: enforcement for reform.
“It didn’t work. And the conservative backlash became part of a populist base, setting the stage for President Donald Trump’s emphasis now only on aggressive enforcement through secret police-style paramilitary invading forces in American cities.”
Brennan cites Clinton’s immigration commissioner Doris Meissner, who doesn’t mention “purity testing” as the failure for Bush’s reform bill, instead blaming the “”enforcement first” attitude and skepticism about prioritizing the upholding of immigration laws.” When Obama came into office with the exact same attitude, the skeptics were proven right: Obama deported three million people and the promised “reform” never came.
I’m not (just) talking about all of this to expose one random internet commenter’s warped view of American politics. The conservatives’ framing of immigration is very successful, and it’s important that people know that in fact, the Democratic base is overwhelmingly pro-immigrant. The Democrats are not “chasing voters” by adopting the rightwing policies.
And here’s the important takeaway: Republicans ALSO do not chase voters. I’ve said it a thousand times on this channel and I’ll say it again: Christian theocratic policies are wildly unpopular and always have been. The majority of Americans want safe and legal abortions. They want separation of church and state. They want single payer healthcare. So how did we end up with Donald Trump? Because of Newt Gingrich and his cronies, who realized you didn’t need to enact policies that voters want in order to get elected. You just need to convince the voters to hate women and minorities and immigrants more than they love being healthy and having a place to live and a job they enjoy. You get them to doubt their own lying eyes. You tell them anything they want to hear, and don’t let them hear anything you don’t want them to hear. And boy is it easy now, because back in the 90s there was a more independent media. Today? Murdoch runs Fox News. Jeff Bezos runs the Washington Post. Bari Weiss runs CBS. Russian disinformation agents run conservative podcasters.
Why didn’t Democrats do the same? Why didn’t they work hard to convince voters to vote for the policies the Democrats already wanted? Simple. They did. The Democratic Party is an arm of the conservatives that exists to pretend to offer opposition to Republicans while maintaining the status quo and allowing rich people to get richer.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. Evangelical Christian fascists didn’t always run the Republican party: they crept in bit by bit, buying influence and taking control even while still a minority and with unpopular policies. And right now, actual progressives are slowly creeping into the Democratic party, and they have the added benefit of holding actually popular policies that can only become MORE popular when more politicians get out there and explain to the American people why their lives will be better off with these policies. We must support those progressives, and at the same time we must fight back against this false narrative that our representatives are just there to vote with whatever they are told the majority wants.
Like it or not, the US is a representative democracy, not a direct democracy, which means, as I was taught in elementary school, that the majority can’t necessarily just vote to take away the rights of a minority. I was pleased recently to learn that this idea was expounded upon by the Daddy of All Conservatives himself, Edmund Burke, who said that “it ought to be the happiness and glory of a Representative, to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him; their opinion, high respect; their business, unremitted attention. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasures, his satisfactions, to theirs; and above all, ever, and in all cases, to prefer their interest to his own. But his unbiassed opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living. These he does not derive from your pleasure; no, nor from the Law and the Constitution. They are a trust from Providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable. Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.”
Funny, I guess it turns out that representative democracies falter when the Representatives in question have no conscience at all, enlightened or otherwise.
So to conclude, if we want to defeat fascism we do not, in fact, need to compromise with the far right, because that’s literally how we got here in the first place. What we need to do is build a movement of conscience, where we don’t sacrifice people and principles based on rightwing talking points. We can protect immigrants. We can protect women. We can protect trans people. And we can still win.
