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Is Minnesota Winning? · Political Junkie Podcast

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Our message is really clear and straightforward.
0:04
SPEAKER_00: We need ICE out of Minnesota.
0:08
SPEAKER_00: They are not making us more safe as the tragic,
0:13
tragic killing this morning as people saw it viscerally on that
0:18
video shows us they
0:19
SPEAKER_00: are making us less safe.
0:50
SPEAKER_02: Hey political junkies,
0:52
SPEAKER_02: I don't usually hit you with a podcast on Monday,
0:55
but the additional murder in Minneapolis over the weekend has
0:59
pushed me to this.
1:01
This is an emergency episode of the Political Junkie podcast in
1:04
which I will be
1:05
SPEAKER_02: joined by Michael Kazin,
1:07
a prize-winning scholar and professor of history at Georgetown
1:10
University.
1:11
SPEAKER_02: Michael is an expert in American social movements and politics.
1:15
His most recent book is What It Took to Win a History of the
1:18
Democratic Party.
1:20
You can find a link to that on the Substack if you navigate over
1:23
there.
1:23
It's a wonderful book and it will prepare you to talk to anyone
1:28
on text about why
1:29
SPEAKER_02: today's Democratic Party is not yesterday's Democratic Party.
1:33
SPEAKER_02: Michael has written extensively about the American peace movement,
1:37
SPEAKER_02: the progressive movement,
1:38
SPEAKER_02: populist movements,
1:39
SPEAKER_02: and the new left.
1:39
You can see all of his work on a link I'm going to provide on
1:42
the substack.
1:43
SPEAKER_02: But today he is here to talk about what's going on in Minneapolis,
1:47
SPEAKER_02: the murders of Renee Good and Alex Preddy,
1:51
SPEAKER_02: and how Minneapolis has organized to try to limit the damage that
1:58
SPEAKER_02: The Trump administration is doing in their beautiful city.
2:01
SPEAKER_02: Michael Kazin, welcome to our show.
2:04
SPEAKER_01: Great to be here, Claire.
2:06
SPEAKER_02: Michael,
2:07
can you tell us a little something about the history of
2:09
Minneapolis and why we
2:11
shouldn't be surprised that the Twin Cities has been able to
2:14
organize as thoroughly
2:16
SPEAKER_02: as they have?
2:17
SPEAKER_01: Well,
2:17
SPEAKER_01: I must say I'm not a Minnesota historian,
2:20
SPEAKER_01: though I know people who are and I've taught there.
2:22
The Gilded Lerman Institute had me up there once to do a
2:27
week-long seminar for high
2:28
SPEAKER_01: school teachers.
2:30
SPEAKER_01: But, you know, Minnesota is an interesting place.
2:34
SPEAKER_01: It was settled primarily by Scandinavian immigrants.
2:39
SPEAKER_01: after the Native Americans were kicked out and massacred.
2:44
SPEAKER_01: And they had a pretty strong union movement beginning in the mid-1930s.
2:49
SPEAKER_01: They had a general strike there in 1934,
2:52
SPEAKER_01: which was led by a Trotskyist breakaway from the Communist Party.
2:59
SPEAKER_01: And then they had a very strong Democratic Party,
3:02
SPEAKER_01: which combined a third party,
3:04
SPEAKER_01: a former Labor Party,
3:05
SPEAKER_01: with the Democratic Party.
3:06
So the formal name of the Minnesota Democratic Party is the
3:09
Democratic Former Labor Party.
3:11
SPEAKER_01: And Hubert Humphrey,
3:12
when he was a very progressive figure before he became a
3:15
supporter of the Vietnam
3:16
SPEAKER_01: War,
3:18
SPEAKER_01: was the mayor of Minneapolis.
3:20
He gave a famous speech at the 1948 Democratic Convention where
3:24
he argued basically
3:24
Democrats had to give up their racist past and embrace human
3:28
rights and a civil
3:29
SPEAKER_01: rights plank in the platform of the party.
3:34
SPEAKER_01: In the 1960s, I knew some people there.
3:36
SPEAKER_01: When I was the new left, I went to the Twin Cities a couple of times.
3:41
SPEAKER_01: They had a very strong
3:43
labor-based left,
3:44
which was not true of the new left in many parts of the
3:48
country.
3:49
SPEAKER_01: And,
3:50
SPEAKER_01: of course,
3:50
SPEAKER_01: they've had a large influx of immigrants,
3:52
SPEAKER_01: as many people,
3:53
SPEAKER_01: many states did after 1965,
3:54
SPEAKER_01: after the immigration laws were changed.
3:57
SPEAKER_01: Somalian immigrants, I'm not sure why so many settle in Minneapolis.
4:01
SPEAKER_01: I don't know that, but obviously a lot have.
4:03
And that,
4:03
of course,
4:03
became very controversial even before Trump won his second
4:09
term.
4:10
SPEAKER_01: But there's also a very good neighborhood network,
4:14
SPEAKER_01: especially in South Minneapolis,
4:16
SPEAKER_01: where the two killings took place of petty and good.
4:22
SPEAKER_01: And a lot of people who were mobilized,
4:28
SPEAKER_01: around Walls' gubernatorial campaigns,
4:32
SPEAKER_01: organized around unionization drives in the service trades,
4:37
SPEAKER_01: organized also to defend immigrant rights.
4:41
SPEAKER_01: They've gotten together.
4:41
SPEAKER_01: One of the things that makes it unusual,
4:42
SPEAKER_01: I think,
4:43
SPEAKER_01: in this sense,
4:44
SPEAKER_01: as a big city,
4:45
SPEAKER_01: is that it's a predominantly white big city.
4:47
SPEAKER_01: And one of the things we can talk about, one of the things I...
4:51
SPEAKER_01: hate to have to acknowledge this,
4:53
but I think it's out there is one of the reasons why these two
4:55
killings have had
4:57
gotten so much attention is because both people were white
5:00
American citizens.
5:03
And there's been,
5:03
of course,
5:04
ISIS mostly been targeting people who are not white.
5:07
SPEAKER_01: But the fact that you have this support network for a lot of
5:13
SPEAKER_01: people being targeted by ICE and support network,
5:15
the people out front there mostly are white American citizens
5:19
because they're
5:19
SPEAKER_01: safer.
5:20
SPEAKER_01: Usually they thought they were safer from being harassed by ICE.
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So I think that sort of shows you that this predominantly white
5:28
area also has a
5:30
SPEAKER_01: very strong multicultural left.
5:33
So again,
5:34
I don't know a lot about the internal dynamics of that
5:37
movement,
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but
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I do have the daughter of good friends of ours is a doctor in
5:44
one of the big public
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SPEAKER_01: hospitals there,
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and she has been sending out emails about all the really quite
5:50
incredible help
5:52
SPEAKER_01: that...
5:53
that progressive figures in this movement have been giving to
5:58
immigrants who they
5:59
SPEAKER_01: feel are under attack,
6:01
SPEAKER_01: bringing them food,
6:02
SPEAKER_01: doing childcare,
6:04
SPEAKER_01: doctors doing house calls,
6:06
SPEAKER_01: which most doctors don't do anymore and so forth.
6:08
SPEAKER_01: So it's really community-wide
6:10
SPEAKER_01: support network and uprising,
6:12
SPEAKER_01: which is one of the reasons why I think ICE people freaked out,
6:15
SPEAKER_01: because they were being faced by opposition with whistles,
6:20
SPEAKER_01: with calls,
6:21
SPEAKER_01: with cars following them everywhere they went.
6:24
SPEAKER_01: And it doesn't obviously excuse what they did in any way,
6:27
but it might help to explain why some of the ICE people felt
6:31
under attack in that
6:32
SPEAKER_01: sense.
6:33
SPEAKER_01: Under not violent attack, but nevertheless under attack.
6:35
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
6:36
SPEAKER_02: No, that's interesting.
6:37
SPEAKER_02: And I just want to tack on to what you're saying here.
6:40
I think the reason there are so many Somali immigrants and also
6:43
Hmong immigrants,
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SPEAKER_02: Hmong are a big population,
6:47
SPEAKER_02: is that the church networks,
6:50
SPEAKER_02: particularly the Lutherans in the Twin Cities,
6:53
were very,
6:53
very active in bringing immigrants to the Twin Cities and
6:57
settling them.
6:58
SPEAKER_02: And so we have these religious networks as well,
7:02
which we saw in action the other day when all of the priests
7:05
and rabbis were lined
7:06
SPEAKER_02: up praying and being hauled away one by one by ICE.
7:12
SPEAKER_02: I think the other thing I'm reading is that some of the networks,
7:15
SPEAKER_02: and you see this in social movements.
7:17
SPEAKER_02: I'd love to get your view on this, Michael.
7:21
Some of the networks that are in place have been in place since
7:25
the George Floyd demonstrations.
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SPEAKER_02: And so it's many of those people who are leading the trainings.
7:32
SPEAKER_02: And as I understand it,
7:34
people in Minneapolis have been training for almost a year for
7:38
this moment.
7:39
SPEAKER_02: They have been getting ready.
7:40
SPEAKER_02: And it is the George Floyd activists who have been at the center of it.
7:44
Can you talk to us a little bit about how social movements sort
7:49
of bleed into one
7:50
SPEAKER_02: another like that?
7:52
SPEAKER_01: That's a really good point.
7:53
SPEAKER_01: Every large social movement in U.S.
7:55
history and those in other countries' histories as well brings
7:59
in different groups,
8:01
SPEAKER_01: diverse in all kinds of ways,
8:02
SPEAKER_01: ideologically and otherwise,
8:04
SPEAKER_01: who have their own issues they most care about,
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SPEAKER_01: but they also understand the need to find solidarity,
8:11
make connections with other single issue groups to support each
8:15
other on the issues
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SPEAKER_01: that really matter.
8:19
SPEAKER_01: And that was true with the Black Freedom Movement,
8:21
that it got going partly from people who had fought for
8:24
immigrant rights before in
8:25
SPEAKER_01: the 1930s and 40s,
8:26
and then joined in with the fight for civil rights in the South
8:31
and the North as
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SPEAKER_01: well.
8:33
SPEAKER_01: Includes people who,
8:34
SPEAKER_01: as you say,
8:34
SPEAKER_01: come from churches,
8:36
SPEAKER_01: especially the more liberal churches,
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SPEAKER_01: which have not been doing very well in recent decades,
8:40
SPEAKER_01: actually,
8:40
SPEAKER_01: but they still exist,
8:42
SPEAKER_01: especially
8:44
SPEAKER_01: You know,
8:44
SPEAKER_01: the fact that these are Scandinavians is important,
8:46
SPEAKER_01: too,
8:46
SPEAKER_01: because Scandinavia has this tradition of social democracy.
8:49
SPEAKER_01: And that's true north of the border,
8:52
SPEAKER_01: too,
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SPEAKER_01: in Saskatchewan,
8:54
SPEAKER_01: which had a very strong social democratic party,
8:57
SPEAKER_01: which ran it for many years.
8:59
SPEAKER_01: So...
9:01
SPEAKER_01: I think social movements in the upper Midwest,
9:03
SPEAKER_01: really,
9:03
SPEAKER_01: people don't know about them so much,
9:05
SPEAKER_01: you know,
9:05
SPEAKER_01: because not many people,
9:07
SPEAKER_01: you know,
9:08
SPEAKER_01: read Minneapolis newspapers or go to go there for vacations or whatever.
9:12
SPEAKER_01: But,
9:13
SPEAKER_01: you know,
9:14
SPEAKER_01: it's in many ways has a history,
9:15
a rich history of social activism as rich as that in Berkeley
9:18
or New York City or
9:19
SPEAKER_01: other places people think about.
9:22
SPEAKER_01: But as you said, Claire,
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SPEAKER_01: Social movements are generative.
9:27
SPEAKER_01: They find ways to combine different enthusiasms behind,
9:35
SPEAKER_01: especially when one of them is under attack.
9:38
SPEAKER_01: And that's really what's happened here.
9:40
SPEAKER_01: And also something else that I'm glad you mentioned,
9:42
SPEAKER_01: the connection to the Black Lives Matter demonstrations,
9:44
SPEAKER_01: because
9:47
SPEAKER_01: Social movements are never spontaneous.
9:50
There's a myth out there that historians know is a myth that
9:54
somehow people just
9:55
get angry and they begin to start acting and they've never done
9:59
anything before,
10:00
SPEAKER_01: but they feel this is really a time when they have to do something.
10:05
SPEAKER_01: That is hardly ever true.
10:07
SPEAKER_01: People who know how to organize movements have organized them before.
10:11
And the best organizers of social movements are people who've
10:13
organized other
10:13
SPEAKER_01: social movements in the past.
10:16
SPEAKER_01: Saul Alinsky,
10:17
SPEAKER_01: who was a leader of community organizing back in the 1940s,
10:21
SPEAKER_01: 50s,
10:21
SPEAKER_01: and 60s,
10:23
SPEAKER_01: used to say,
10:24
SPEAKER_01: if you want to organize a community,
10:25
SPEAKER_01: find people who know how to organize.
10:27
SPEAKER_01: You're not going to invent organizers.
10:31
SPEAKER_01: Organizers have to...
10:33
SPEAKER_01: spend years, often decades, learning to be organizers.
10:36
SPEAKER_01: And those are the most effective organizers in most cases.
10:40
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
10:41
And you mentioned the fact that ICE did not expect this kind of
10:47
resistance in
10:48
SPEAKER_02: Minneapolis,
10:48
SPEAKER_02: which seems kind of ludicrous from our perspective,
10:51
SPEAKER_02: because we know the things we know about Minneapolis.
10:54
But it doesn't seem ludicrous from the perspective of the Trump
10:57
administration,
10:57
which does all kinds of things without really planning them or
11:00
researching them or
11:02
SPEAKER_02: Anything like that.
11:03
SPEAKER_02: Nevertheless,
11:04
it appears that this may have been a tremendous misstep on the
11:09
part of the Trump
11:10
administration that even Republicans don't like seeing white
11:14
Americans gunned down
11:15
SPEAKER_02: in cold blood.
11:17
SPEAKER_02: And the, you know, both of these murders were really quite horrifying.
11:21
SPEAKER_02: Alex Pretty was on the ground.
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SPEAKER_02: He had apparently been carrying a weapon, but he had been disarmed.
11:29
He was surrounded by four or five ICE officers and somebody
11:33
pumped 10 bullets into his back.
11:35
Renee Goode was shot in the face and then she was shot two more
11:38
times for good measure.
11:41
SPEAKER_02: You know,
11:41
SPEAKER_02: I'm thinking about Kent State and the ways in which those students,
11:48
SPEAKER_02: white students being killed at Kent State,
11:52
really sort of was a shift in how the general public understood
11:57
the Vietnam War.
12:00
Do you think that this is going to be some kind of pivot point
12:04
for Americans?
12:06
SPEAKER_01: We'll have to see.
12:07
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
12:07
SPEAKER_01: by the time that the Kent State shootings took place in May 1970,
12:13
SPEAKER_01: most Americans already turned against the Vietnam War.
12:15
And the Nixon administration was already saying,
12:17
we're going to bring American troops out.
12:20
SPEAKER_01: They were bringing American troops out slowly.
12:21
The South Vietnamese Army was taking out more of the print of
12:25
the fighting and the deaths.
12:28
SPEAKER_01: Bombing North Vietnam was still going on,
12:30
SPEAKER_01: but nevertheless,
12:31
SPEAKER_01: the war was beginning to wind down for the U.S.
12:35
And then Nixon invaded Cambodia,
12:36
and that ramped it up very quickly,
12:40
but not in a lasting way.
12:43
The difference now is that until these current raids and
12:49
obviously unsuccessful,
12:51
SPEAKER_01: politically unpopular killings,
12:55
Trump's ratings on immigration were higher than his ratings on
13:00
the other issues that he ran on.
13:02
SPEAKER_01: Still,
13:03
SPEAKER_01: I think most Americans,
13:05
SPEAKER_01: including some Democrats,
13:07
SPEAKER_01: but still almost all Republicans and many independents,
13:09
SPEAKER_01: think that undocumented illegal immigration went too far,
13:13
SPEAKER_01: that Biden opened the border too much to millions of people,
13:17
SPEAKER_01: and they wanted something done.
13:19
SPEAKER_01: It was based on that expectation and that
13:23
popularity uh that trump uh with the aid of you know people
13:27
like steven miller who
13:28
are you know just uh um you know uh i'm not sure what to call
13:33
him um he's a
13:35
horrible person he's just a horrible person but he loves
13:38
tyranny it's not just he's
13:39
terrible yes he really likes the idea of pushing people around
13:43
um anyway um
13:47
SPEAKER_01: But I think what's happening now,
13:51
SPEAKER_01: whether it's going to be a pivot point or not,
13:54
SPEAKER_01: we'll have to see.
13:55
As you've probably seen this morning,
13:58
Trump backed away from the rhetoric he'd been using.
14:02
He actually called Governor Walz and he said he had a good
14:06
conversation with the governor.
14:08
SPEAKER_01: He called a
14:09
SPEAKER_01: left-wing loony, a radical leftist, unhinged, etc., etc.
14:14
And he also sent one of the evidently more trusted people in
14:19
the deportation
14:20
SPEAKER_01: machine,
14:21
SPEAKER_01: this guy Tom Homan's so-called border czar,
14:24
SPEAKER_01: to run things there.
14:25
SPEAKER_01: So Christy Noem was sort of out of it, at least for the time being.
14:28
SPEAKER_01: So
14:30
SPEAKER_01: If no more people are killed,
14:32
if ICE backs away in Minnesota and doesn't do similar kinds of
14:36
things in other
14:37
SPEAKER_01: cities,
14:38
then it's possible that Trump will regain at least more of the
14:42
popularity that he's
14:42
SPEAKER_01: lost because of this.
14:43
SPEAKER_01: And the fact that Republicans,
14:45
SPEAKER_01: some of them at least,
14:46
SPEAKER_01: are not denouncing Trump,
14:48
SPEAKER_01: but at least questioning what's happened.
14:51
SPEAKER_01: They are not taking a lead from Stephen Miller.
14:53
SPEAKER_01: That also shows that Trump is not a political idiot here.
14:56
SPEAKER_01: He knows he's in trouble on this issue.
15:00
Yeah,
15:00
he's not a political idiot,
15:01
but he has such a short attention span.
15:03
SPEAKER_02: And they have dug themselves into quite a hole here,
15:07
which is a somewhat bloodless way to describe an extremely
15:11
bloody and abusive and
15:13
SPEAKER_02: bullying and damaging conflict.
15:15
SPEAKER_02: But I'm also thinking about another phrase from the Vietnam War.
15:20
SPEAKER_02: which was the credibility gap.
15:23
Journalists invented this to talk about the dissonance between
15:27
what they actually
15:29
SPEAKER_02: observed in Vietnam and what they were actually being told in Vietnam.
15:34
SPEAKER_02: press briefings.
15:35
And we have the reemergence of the credibility gap,
15:39
but almost on the level of farce now.
15:42
SPEAKER_02: And we have been used to propaganda being spread,
15:47
SPEAKER_02: particularly on social media,
15:49
SPEAKER_02: but also in the news by
15:51
members of the administration who just get up in press
15:54
conferences and lie about everything.
15:56
SPEAKER_02: But in relation to what's happening in Minneapolis,
16:00
we have members of the administration spinning narratives that
16:05
are obviously false.
16:08
Is this going to break through in any way to key voter groups
16:14
that they're not only
16:15
SPEAKER_02: doing these things,
16:16
they're not taking any responsibility for them in any way that
16:19
we recognize?
16:21
SPEAKER_01: I hate to say it,
16:22
SPEAKER_01: Claire,
16:22
but I think Americans are less troubled by lying from on top
16:28
than they used to be.
16:29
SPEAKER_01: I think we're so divided into our camps on both sides that Republicans,
16:35
SPEAKER_01: as long as the lying doesn't lead to chaos,
16:39
SPEAKER_01: like we've seen in Minneapolis,
16:41
SPEAKER_01: they're going to stay with Trump.
16:43
SPEAKER_01: And Democrats,
16:45
SPEAKER_01: of course,
16:46
SPEAKER_01: are not going to give Trump credit for anything,
16:50
SPEAKER_01: even if they might agree with one or two things that he's doing.
16:54
SPEAKER_01: So I think that was different.
16:55
And during the Vietnam War,
16:57
there were Republicans who turned against Vixen.
17:02
SPEAKER_01: There were Republicans who,
17:04
SPEAKER_01: of course,
17:06
joined in wanting to get Nixon out of office during the war
17:09
against scandal.
17:10
SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
17:11
SPEAKER_01: If all that was happening now,
17:12
SPEAKER_01: of course,
17:13
SPEAKER_01: you would think after January 6th that Republicans would have said,
17:17
SPEAKER_01: well,
17:18
SPEAKER_01: I'm not going to support this guy again.
17:19
But of course,
17:20
they nominated him again,
17:21
and he won by a larger margin than he won in 2016.
17:25
SPEAKER_01: He won the popular vote, at least a plurality of the popular vote.
17:30
SPEAKER_01: So I wish the credibility gap mattered.
17:32
SPEAKER_01: But I think a lot of people who like Trump,
17:35
SPEAKER_01: or at least voted for him,
17:36
SPEAKER_01: at least,
17:36
SPEAKER_01: whether they liked him or not,
17:38
SPEAKER_01: are willing to say,
17:40
I'll stick with him as long as he doesn't mess up my life and
17:44
the lives of people I
17:45
SPEAKER_01: know,
17:45
SPEAKER_01: because all politicians lie.
17:48
SPEAKER_01: All politicians are corrupt.
17:50
SPEAKER_01: So the level of cynicism,
17:52
SPEAKER_01: I think,
17:52
SPEAKER_01: in this country about politics is higher than it was 50,
17:57
SPEAKER_01: 60 years ago.
17:58
SPEAKER_01: I wish that weren't true, but I'm afraid it is.
17:59
SPEAKER_01: And so you'll have to see.
18:02
SPEAKER_01: But I think in the end, only more...
18:05
uh kind of use the the four-letter word uh only more fuck-ups
18:09
on the part of of
18:10
trump and his people uh will turn enough people against him
18:13
look his popularity is
18:14
only 40 percent by most 40 41 percent so he's already lost
18:18
about a quarter of the
18:19
people who voted for him if the polls are correct that's a lot
18:23
in only a year and
18:25
newsweek just did a poll and i don't know whether newsweek's
18:28
polls are very
18:29
SPEAKER_02: accurate but
18:30
SPEAKER_02: What they say is between last week and this week,
18:35
SPEAKER_02: 20% of Republicans now say that ICE should be abolished,
18:39
SPEAKER_02: that it is too broken and too corrupt and undisciplined,
18:43
SPEAKER_02: and that it should just be abolished,
18:44
SPEAKER_02: which is actually kind of astonishing.
18:46
And just to remind our listeners,
18:49
it's not just Republicans and Democrats.
18:51
SPEAKER_02: It's really the independents who are running the show here.
18:55
SPEAKER_02: But to have 20% of Republicans be
18:58
SPEAKER_02: actually turning on a police agency strikes me as important.
19:05
SPEAKER_01: How about you?
19:07
SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
19:07
and that's why he's making this U-turn away from saying that
19:11
these killings were
19:16
SPEAKER_01: the fault of those who were killed.
19:19
SPEAKER_01: He's not peddling the outrageous lies anymore.
19:21
SPEAKER_01: He's already saying, well, let's get this under control.
19:23
SPEAKER_01: Let's have local police and federal authorities cooperate together.
19:30
SPEAKER_01: He's sounding like very untrumpy and Trump.
19:32
SPEAKER_01: He won't keep that up because that's not his personality.
19:35
SPEAKER_01: And we'll have to see.
19:39
SPEAKER_01: Ironically,
19:39
SPEAKER_01: one of the things that has probably made a lot of,
19:43
SPEAKER_01: even Republicans,
19:46
less enamored of this policy in immigration is that Trump has
19:50
pretty much sealed
19:51
SPEAKER_01: the southern border.
19:52
SPEAKER_01: Hardly anybody's coming across the border now.
19:55
And that was where Biden really got in trouble and other
19:57
Democrats got in trouble
19:58
SPEAKER_01: because they seemed like the southern border was a problem.
20:01
SPEAKER_01: But I don't think...
20:04
Even a lot of Republicans think,
20:05
well,
20:06
you know,
20:06
Minneapolis,
20:07
is that really the problem here?
20:09
You know,
20:10
they're worried about more about Texas and Florida and
20:12
California.
20:13
SPEAKER_01: So that might be working into it as well.
20:16
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
20:17
And of course,
20:17
ICE is currently surging in Lewiston,
20:20
Maine,
20:21
as I understand it.
20:23
busloads of people from Portland have gone to Lewiston to
20:27
demonstrate and get in the way.
20:30
SPEAKER_01: That's the other thing that people should talk about more.
20:35
SPEAKER_01: There are far,
20:36
SPEAKER_01: far,
20:37
far more undocumented immigrants in Texas and Florida and
20:40
Arizona near the southern
20:44
SPEAKER_01: border than
20:45
SPEAKER_01: That there are in Maine or Minnesota.
20:47
SPEAKER_01: I think there's 130,000 undocumented immigrants in Minnesota,
20:50
SPEAKER_01: 5 million or something like that in Texas.
20:53
SPEAKER_01: So clearly you're not going to send ICE into Dallas.
20:56
SPEAKER_01: You're not going to send ICE into Houston.
20:58
SPEAKER_01: You're not going to send ICE into places where states Republicans run.
21:04
SPEAKER_02: Right,
21:04
SPEAKER_02: and of course,
21:05
SPEAKER_02: if you go on X,
21:07
SPEAKER_02: what MAGA influencers are saying is,
21:09
SPEAKER_02: well,
21:09
we don't have to because the governors there are taking care of
21:12
the problem,
21:13
SPEAKER_02: which is of course not true.
21:17
Michael,
21:17
we only have a minute here,
21:19
but what should Democrats be doing right now?
21:22
SPEAKER_02: And I'm talking about the party,
21:24
SPEAKER_02: I'm talking about the voters,
21:25
although the voters seem to be doing just fine at getting
21:28
organized and getting
21:29
SPEAKER_02: trained and getting out there.
21:30
SPEAKER_02: But what should the Democratic Party be doing right now
21:34
both to try to stop this madness and to use it to make the
21:40
pivot to the midterm elections.
21:41
SPEAKER_01: I think Democrats have to have an immigration policy, which makes sense.
21:46
It can't be a lot of voters who aren't Democrats think
21:52
Democrats just want anybody
21:53
SPEAKER_01: to come in who wants to.
21:54
SPEAKER_01: That's not true, but that can be their policy.
21:57
SPEAKER_01: I think comprehensive immigration reform,
21:58
SPEAKER_01: the kind of thing that George W.
21:59
SPEAKER_01: Bush supported,
22:00
SPEAKER_01: that Barack Obama supported,
22:02
SPEAKER_01: where there's a path to legalization for people already here,
22:05
SPEAKER_01: undocumented people already here,
22:07
SPEAKER_01: and you do have a much tougher border patrol.
22:10
SPEAKER_01: That's fine.
22:10
SPEAKER_01: Keep people from coming in illegally.
22:13
That,
22:13
to me,
22:13
made sense at the time when it was first proposed as a
22:16
bipartisan idea.
22:18
SPEAKER_01: I think it still makes sense today.
22:20
SPEAKER_01: And most Americans supported it then.
22:22
I think if you put it out there and communicated it well,
22:25
they'd still support it today.
22:26
SPEAKER_01: So I think immigration...
22:29
has always been a problem in American politics when there's
22:32
mass immigration.
22:34
SPEAKER_01: As you know,
22:35
SPEAKER_01: Claire,
22:35
SPEAKER_01: as a historian of the United States,
22:38
SPEAKER_01: the New Deal era from the 1930s up until the 1960s,
22:41
SPEAKER_01: mid-60s,
22:43
SPEAKER_01: was a time when very few immigrants were coming to the country,
22:46
SPEAKER_01: except those from south of the border,
22:48
SPEAKER_01: but very few from other parts of the world,
22:50
SPEAKER_01: and not that many from south of the border.
22:52
SPEAKER_01: And that is a time when
22:54
SPEAKER_01: had some of the most progressive policies economically,
22:56
SPEAKER_01: at least,
22:57
SPEAKER_01: in American history,
22:58
SPEAKER_01: and there was this large working-class movement.
23:01
SPEAKER_01: So I think you can't have a nation-state without controlled borders.
23:06
SPEAKER_01: At the same time,
23:07
you can't have a decent society unless you have a moral
23:11
position towards people who
23:13
want to come here and who would be good citizens if you're
23:15
allowed to become
23:16
SPEAKER_01: citizens.
23:17
SPEAKER_01: So I think that combination is important for Democrats to support.
23:22
SPEAKER_02: Michael, thank you so much for your time and solidarity forever.
23:26
SPEAKER_01: You too.
23:27
SPEAKER_01: Bye-bye.
23:32
SPEAKER_02: And that's it for today's show.
23:34
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23:35
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23:38
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23:38
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23:40
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23:44
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23:48
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23:49
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24:00
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24:00
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24:03
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24:04
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24:07
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24:09
Political Junkie is written,
24:10
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24:11
edited,
24:12
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24:13
Claire Potter.
24:14
SPEAKER_02: Today's theme is Last Train to Elowen by Alcever Lake.
24:17
You can find their work and all the talented artists we feature
24:20
on these episodes
24:21
SPEAKER_02: on Soundstripe.
24:22
SPEAKER_02: That's all for now.
24:24
SPEAKER_02: See you at the end of the week.
26:09
you