Democrats who think they’re winning the immigration debate and that their antics in Congress are convincing Americans we don’t need a border wall may be in for a shock.
A new poll focused on the seats of Nancy Pelosi’s most vulnerable allies — ten Democrat representatives of districts won by President Donald Trump in 2016 — paints a very different picture.
Regardless of how these districts voted in the midterm elections this past November, they support the President’s policies on border security, not Speaker Pelosi’s; and not by a slim margin. Sixty-one percent agree with the President, compared to 35 percent who are opposed.
The reasons are clear and closely aligned with those that motivate the President. A majority of these voters — 52 percent — recognize that the situation on the border is a national security threat, so they support building a wall or a barrier by ten points.
The message to Chuck and Nancy here is clear: whatever temporary “victory” Democrats want to claim in President Trump’s agreement to reopen the government for three weeks, they are not out of the woods yet. In these battleground districts, support for the Democrat leadership’s “no wall, no way” strategy is incredibly low.
Only 28 percent of respondents would have their Democratic congressperson stand with Nancy Pelosi to block any wall being built. When informed of additional information — like the fact that the vast majority of U.S. Border Patrol agents believe the wall is necessary to secure the border — support for “no wall, no way” falls to just 24 percent of respondents.
By contrast, not only would more of these respondents like their Democratic representatives to support building the wall rather than oppose it, a huge plurality wants the two sides to compromise.
The news gets even worse for Chuck and Nancy. By seven points, these vulnerable Democrat districts think President Trump is the one in this fight who is open to compromise. In fact, an absolute majority of respondents thought the Democrats should have accepted President Trump’s unilateral offer outright to address our border crisis.
Nancy Pelosi rejected that offer, which would have reopened the government permanently and given illegal immigrants once covered by Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and Temporary Protected Status (TPS) a three year reprieve, before she even heard it.
Even securing the pay of 800,000 federal workers and securing a victory that Democrats have been fighting nearly 18 years to get was not enough to bring Pelosi back to the table. The $5.7 billion President Trump sought in return to fund border security including sections of border barriers was simply too much for the Democrat obstructionists to agree to.
Democrats and Republicans alike have three weeks to fix this mess and that kind of reluctance is just not going to cut it. All Members of Congress regardless of party should take their marching orders from their constituents in these districts.
It’s time for a serious compromise that includes the wall our border patrol says we need. These results indicate both parties ignore that at their peril.
