Fox Information was by no means going to be a pleasant venue for Vice President Kamala Harris. In an look on Particular Report With Bret Baier, she was requested about among the American proper’s prime fascinations and speaking factors: gender-affirming surgical procedures, Joe Biden’s psychological acuity, the prospect of warfare with Iran. And — after all — she received robust questions on immigration coverage and the southern border.
It was in answering these questions that Harris demonstrated how a lot the Democratic Occasion is transferring proper — towards the ideological heart on immigration — below the banner of her candidacy.
She selected to not defend the advantage of immigration, or of immigrants themselves, and continued to cede the taking part in subject to the correct. There have been no references to the nation’s immigrant roots or the worth of these immigrants (right here legally or not) that Baier saved asking about. And there was no condemnation of Donald Trump’s acknowledged plans for mass deportations of undocumented immigrants. She didn’t point out it, at the same time as he pitches invoking archaic legal guidelines to spherical up and deport hundreds of thousands of individuals dwelling in america.
As an alternative, Harris used the interview to additional distance herself from her previous and her social gathering’s left flank on immigration. Did she remorse the immigrant-friendly positions she took in 2019 to permit undocumented immigrants to use for driver’s licenses, qualify without spending a dime tuition at some universities, or acquire public medical health insurance below a common plan?
“Hear, that was 5 years in the past, and I’m very clear that I’ll comply with the legislation. I’ve made that assertion time and again,” Harris responded.
If that’s the case, Baier adopted up, why did she choose a working mate, Gov. Tim Walz, who signed a few of those self same proposals into state legislation in Minnesota?
Harris paused earlier than saying that her ticket is “very clear that we should help and implement federal legislation and that’s precisely what we are going to do.”
And so the sample repeated itself: Given alternatives to defend migrants within the face of traditional right-wing fearmongering (as when she was requested about “single grownup males who went on to commit heinous crimes”), Harris would cede the premise and pivot to the bipartisan border invoice Biden proposed earlier this 12 months that Trump helped tank. She did the identical when requested if she regretted the Biden administration’s repeal of Trump-era govt orders limiting immigration — citing a invoice the White Home proposed that she stated would’ve “fastened our immigration system.” However she omitted that it additionally would have offered a pathway to citizenship for sure undocumented immigrants already dwelling within the US.
This all continues a pattern for Harris. Simply final week, at a city corridor hosted by the Spanish-language media community Univision, Harris was twice introduced with alternatives to invoke and condemn Trump’s mass deportation plans when talking to attendees who had household who had been deported or unable to get well being care as a result of they lacked authorized standing. She handed on that probability, as a substitute referencing her previous help for Deferred Motion for Childhood Arrivals program recipients earlier than pivoting to speak about reviving the bipartisan border invoice.
And since turning into the nominee and headlining a nationwide social gathering conference that tended to reference immigration within the context of needing extra hardline border insurance policies, she’s continued to push for a bipartisan border invoice that many progressive and liberal immigration advocacy teams and members of her personal social gathering don’t help. These critics are nonetheless biting their tongues — declaring the necessity to unite to win the election and maintain a roundly anti-immigrant Trump from controlling the chief department — however that truce will solely maintain so far as November 5.
