Hillary Clinton’s latest software update is a slight improvement on the previous version. Gone is the simpering sachet of Frank’s Red Hot. Remarkably, engineers have patched the many bugs plaguing the two-time presidential malfunction.
In an interview with The Guardian this week, Hillary sacrificed a sacred cow of the modern progressive Left, imploring beleaguered European leaders firmly to grip an issue verboten among the fashionable and open-minded.
“I think Europe needs to get a handle on migration because that is what lit the flame,” she said, before nodding toward Angela Merkel’s disastrous decision to open German borders to 1.5 million Syrian migrants.
“I admire the very generous and compassionate approaches that were taken particularly by leaders like Angela Merkel, but I think it is fair to say Europe has done its part, and must send a very clear message—‘we are not going to be able to continue provide refuge and support’—because if we don’t deal with the migration issue it will continue to roil the body politic.”
Her remarks are likely to rock a boat already lapped at by the forces of immigration woe. Europe is riven with political conflict. Most of the tumult, hitherto whispered among the Left, stems from voters’ anger toward lawless and seemingly naïve immigration policies.
After all, Merkel’s immigration whimsy killed her. And it serves as a case study for populist parties vying for the votes of concerned Europeans anxious at being branded “racist” for possessing opinions held by a majority of their peers.
Immigration: The Kingmaker
The interview, part of a series of cursory glances The Guardian is taking toward the hoi polloi, reveals Hillary’s understanding of why Donald Trump is president. Finally.
It is not misogyny. Not self-hating women. Not the electoral college. Not James Comey. Not Bernie Sanders. Not low-information voters. Not Russia. Not the DNC. Not Jill Stein.
It is the same issue driving a populist wave across Europe. Immigration is kingmaker. And will be until someone decides to admit so.
It is what won Brexit. It is what put populists in power in Italy, Austria, Germany, Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic. It is the reason Angela Merkel is now vincible, and stepping down from a job for life. Indeed, as she pointed out: It is the reason Great Britain is leaving the European Union. Hillary gets it. Finally.
But her warning comes a little too late. Mainstream parties in Europe are already stealing the clothes of their populist tormentors. The recent Swedish election saw its center-left bloc promise to halve refugee numbers, tighten security, and slash welfare for arrivals. This late show denied the populist Sweden Democrats a first-place finish.
Hillary’s newfound pragmatism all but announces her run for president. Which is not a surprise. What is surprising lies in the method. Perhaps realizing the Democratic presidential nomination is already replete with hard-left open-borders types like Senator Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Hillary has deftly tacked toward a mainstream detested by the purists.
After all, what ails Democrats ails center-left parties all across Europe. As mentioned previously, voters consistently tell pollsters that immigration is their main concern.
Wooing the Trump Demographic
It’s also the reason traditional blue-collar Democrats have migrated to the Republican Party, as the intellectual Brahmins inoculated from the wage-killing ghettoizing effects of their naïveté sneer from their gated communities at those the Democrats once stood for.
Hillary knows, if they are ever to return to the White House, they must win back those blue-collar voters from Trump’s column.
But will this ploy work? A woman whom Americans regard as untrustworthy, scheming and economical with the truth, might have trouble rebranding herself as a ’90s Democrat. Perhaps she has done her research. Perhaps she has been reading American Greatness.
Hillary’s measured sensibility could enjoy strong support among Americans. Alas, Democrats used to say things they now decry as “racist” when President Trump repeats them.
Earlier this year, 63 percent of Americans said they would legalize DACA recipients in exchange for President Trump’s four-pillar immigration reform, including a merit-based system, border wall funding, elimination of the visa lottery, and E-Verify. Two-thirds said illegal aliens caught entering the United States should be sent home.
But Hillary has a major problem. Democrats have veered leftward on immigration since the sensate 1990s. Their progressive base, lathering into foam, won’t take kindly to anything remotely sensible. Indeed, that faction regards borders as an obscene relic.
And they regard Hillary as the same.
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