Democrats can beat Republicans in November by portraying the GOP as the tool of wealthy investors, despite the Democrats’ very unpopular migration policies, says Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg.
“Our poll [of 2,770 people] shows that we make our biggest gains when Democrats take on the corporate monopolies that are driving up prices, despite making super profits,” according to a September 30 report by Greenberg, who gained fame in the early 1980s by identifying the shift of working-class white from the Democratic Party to President Ronald Reagan’s GOP.
Greenberg continued:
The battle for the economy is now not over the number of jobs, but what government is doing to make work pay—and to champion working people and attack the billionaires who prosper at the expense of everyone else. This is the core message that will enable Democrats to win and keep winning.
That anti-elite message can overcome the GOP’s “ugliest possible message on crime and the border,” he wrote.
Greenberg has already warned Democrats in early August about the Democrats’ very unpopular pro-migration policies:
I asked voters to choose between a Democratic message … and a Republican message, embodying [Donald] Trump’s words on making America great again, that led with crime and borders and ended with the police. A stunning 28 percent of Blacks chose the America First message. But more alarming, 45 percent of [Asian] voters and 47 percent of Hispanics did too.
Greenberg’s new proposal is aimed at a major crack in the GOP’s donor-driven immigration message.
That GOP message minimizes the painful pocketbook impact of donor-backed mass migration on Americans’ wages, rents, housing, and civic life.
Biden is fuelling the migration wave into Americans' jobs by ignoring the law requiring migrants be detained until asylum cases are decided. https://t.co/TP6wHWbn6T
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) April 4, 2022
For example, an October 2 statement from the Republican National Committee touted the huge number of “gotaway” illegal migrants who have sneaked into the U.S alongside the roughly 2 million illegal migrants who are being allowed to stay by Biden’s deputies. But the statement ignored the economic and pocketbook impact:
There have now been over 900,000 “gotaways” – people who illegally crossed the border and escaped into the U.S. – since Joe Biden took office … That means the number of gotaways since Biden took office is larger than the population of San Francisco. Reminder: We have no idea who these people are, and experts warn about the dangerous criminal elements, including terrorists, murderers, and gang members, who are taking advantage of Biden’s open border.
Amid the GOP’s effort to hide the pocketbook impact of migration on wages and rents, Greenburg’s survey shows the voters are almost evenly split on which party can best deal with the issue. The poll showed a 48 percent to 52 percent split when it asked: “Please say whether you think the Democrats or the Republicans would do with it … immigration.”
Other surveys show similar near-even splits amid a flood of GOP campaign advertising that hides the money:
President Joe Biden’s mass migration policy is being pushed by West Coast investors and their progressive support groups.
But Greenberg is a political strategist, so he explained how the Democratic Party can use a populist economic pitch to hide its painful, pro-corporate, pro-migration policies:
Democrats have narrowed the gap on the economy but still trail Republicans by 8 points. Staying there is fatal. People are on the edge financially, and they are paying a lot of attention to what is happening in Washington.
…
Just throw out the phrase “top 1 percent,” and marvel at the reaction, as I did in focus groups conducted for Rethink Trade. In Philadelphia, the service workers shouted out, “rich,” “wish I was part of it,” “fortunate,” “spoiled,” “don’t have a clue, entitled.” “Better than ever before.”The Black and Hispanic workers in Philadelphia went right to “elite” and “Elon Musk.” For the Seattle women college graduates, they said, “wealthy,” “greedy,” “privileged,” “oligarchic,” “domination,” and “entitled.” In Texas, the Republican men, with even more venom, said, “greedy,” “no worries,” “Jeff Bezos,” “ingenuity at its finest,” and “Elon.” And in Seattle, the college men went to “rich, undertaxed,” “misunderstood in the media,” “too concentrated,” and critically, “too powerful.”The discussion of the top 1 percent and monopolies does not expose the usual partisan splits. Nobody offered the usual response about “wealth creators” or “job creators,” barring the one Trump voter in the Philadelphia group.
Extraction Migration
It is easier for government officials to grow the economy by immigration than by growing exports, productivity, or the birth rate.
So the federal government deliberately extracts millions of migrants from poor countries and uses them as extra workers, consumers, and renters. This extraction migration policy both grows and skews the national economy.
It prevents tight labor markets and so it shifts vast wealth from ordinary people to investors, billionaires, and Wall Street. It makes it difficult for ordinary Americans to advance in their careers, get married, raise families, buy homes, or build wealth.
Extraction migration slows innovation and shrinks Americans’ productivity. This happens because migration allows employers to boost stock prices by using stoop labor and disposable workers instead of the skilled American professionals and productivity-boosting technology that earlier allowed Americans and their communities to earn more money.
Establishment Republicans, media businesses, and major GOP donors hide the skew towards investors by ignoring the pocketbook impact and by touting border chaos, welfare spending, migrant crime, and drug smuggling.
Many polls show the public wants to welcome some immigration. But the polls also show deep and broad public opposition to labor migration and the inflow of temporary contract workers into jobs needed by young U.S. graduates.
This “Third Rail” opposition is growing, anti-establishment, multiracial, cross-sex, non-racist, class-based, bipartisan, rational, persistent, and recognizes the solidarity that American citizens owe to one another.
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