Bernie Sanders’ bad week: Immigration trumps socialism

Already under fire for being slow to join fellow 2020 Democratic presidential prospects on the “abolish ICE” train following an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Sanders tried to help himself with conciliatory tweets. He noted he had voted against the creation of ICE and the Department of Homeland Security back in 2002 and called it the “right vote.”

But when it comes to what to do with ICE today, Sanders appeared to want to mend it, not end it. “That will mean restructuring the agencies that enforce our immigration laws, including ICE,” he tweeted.

The reaction was swift and fierce. The New Republic ran an article headlined, “Bernie Sanders Is Not the Left.” Its author, staff writer Sarah Jones, argued, “It’s certainly true that Sanders is to the left of most Democrats. But contrary to how he’s often portrayed in the media, he is not a doctrinaire leftist.”

“It’s one thing to call for breaking up the big banks,” she added, “and quite another to call for the nationalization of private industries.”

“Let’s hope that the next person who gets the chance asks him why he is still taking such a weak and morally timid position on ICE,” wrote Splinter’s Jack Mirkinson. The Intercept’s Jeremy Scahill declared Sanders was “on the wrong side of history,” which is the worst place for a progressive to be.

This isn’t the first time Sanders has landed himself in hot water for being behind the times on immigration. During his presidential campaign, he told Vox he did not believe in open borders, citing wage competition and the libertarian pedigree of the idea. He even threw in some Koch brothers-bashing for good measure.

To no avail. Vox followed up with an article accusing Sanders of harboring “fear” of “immigrant labor” that is “ugly” and “wrongheaded.” To prove that politics makes strange bedfellows, the lede of this story on a liberal website going after a socialist senator invokes the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial page’s support of a constitutional amendment stating, “There shall be open borders.” The Guardian also published a column pronouncing Sanders “wrong” on the subject.

Interestingly, conservatives who agree with former Wall Street Journal editorial page editor Robert Bartley and the Koch brothers on immigration often say those on the Right who disagree are practicing collectivism and central planning rather than demonstrating a commitment to free markets and the free movement of people.

Meanwhile, the overwhelmingly unpopular spike in family separation at the border that occurred in the wake of President Trump’s zero-tolerance policy has finally helped liberals find a government agency they would like to abolish.

The main reason Sanders came up short in his quest for the Democratic presidential nomination was not Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s Democratic National Committee or his own preference for getting elected as an independent. It was his failure to appeal in significant enough numbers to black and Latino voters.

Immigration may not have been the reason for this, as polls have frequently found black and Hispanic attitudes on the issue to be more ambivalent than is generally assumed. But Sanders represents one of the whitest states in the country — his former campaign spokeswoman dismissed the idea of another Vermonter, liberal hero of the last war Howard Dean, returning to the helm of the DNC by saying “we don’t need white people leading the Democratic Party right now” — and is in his 70s.

Sanders is a throwback to a time when even socialists emphasized bread-and-butter economics rather than talking like this and when they weighed the need of workers of the world to unite against the possible impact of low-wage immigration on workers of all races in their own country.

It seems he had better get with the program, quickly.