A distraction from what?
Fighting back is precisely what gettable voters want from leaders right now.
While many high-profile Democrats are preparing to fight the Trump administration’s lawless and barbaric treatment of immigrants (good on them), not everyone in the party is unified behind this approach. This week, Axios reported:
In fairness, I think some of this sentiment can be boiled down to “right idea, wrong application.” Democrats are routinely criticized for waging fights on the opposition’s turf: over-explaining, playing defense, validating their opponents’ moral compass and arguing that they simply disagree about the implementation. I’d also argue this notion that Democrats shouldn’t fight Trump on immigration stems from an ongoing misinterpretation of the 2024 election outcome: that Trump’s 1-point, sub-50% margin indicates that Democrats are completely out of step with voters. In reality, Trump mainly garnered majority support when it came to the abstracts of his immigration policy (securing the border, putting Americans first). Now that he’s in power, governing in plain sight, the public has more information, and they don’t like what they see. This is a fight worth having. Here are two reasons why.
Public opinion is thermostatic. Just because Democrats lost on immigration in 2024 doesn’t mean they’re losing in 2025.
There’s a concept in political science called “thermostatic politics,” which suggests that public opinion operates like a thermostat, toggling between left and right, balancing whoever is in power to ensure some equilibrium. A powerfully liberal national mood in the early 1960s ushered in LBJ’s Great Society and profound social change, but in reaction, the electorate shifted right, giving rise to a Republican-dominated era of “law and order.” For this reason, I’d argue it’s a major mistake to interpret public opinion on immigration as either static or stable. The fact that most voters who prioritized immigration chose Trump in 2024 does not mean Democrats are perpetually doomed to be on the losing side of the issue.
Consider how Trump combined the economy and immigration to form a compelling narrative while running for reelection. When he first vowed to enact a 25% tariff on all products imported from Mexico and Canada via Executive Order, he noted the tariffs would “remain in effect until such time as Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country!” He offered a narrative through-line that connected the economy with immigration and cultural resentment by telling people, “you are struggling because your government is prioritizing immigrants instead of you, and I will fix that so that you, and America, always come first.” That was persuasive to voters, in the abstract.
But today, we are living in a completely different reality. The narrative link that Trump established between immigration and the economy is weakening. Tariff chaos set markets plunging, and prices are still high; meanwhile, immigrants who have committed no crimes are being disappeared off the streets by plainclothes thugs, sent to ICE facilities out of state or worse, to a gulag in El Salvador, where MAGA warriors are creating propaganda by using them as props. None of this is popular, and none of this puts money in voters’ pockets. The theme that now ties these two issues together is Trump’s feckless antagonism. He’s crashing the economy for no reason, alienating trade partners and allies based on nonsensical mathematical equations—all so that American consumers can pay more for imported goods—and he’s disappearing innocent people off the streets, ruining lives and upending our judicial system in the process.
Consider data from two recent polls, both of which show the tide is turning against Trump on immigration:
YouGov recently put out a poll showing that a mere 26% of Americans support “deporting immigrants without criminal convictions to El Salvador to be imprisoned, without letting them challenge the deportation in court.”
Change Research recently surveyed voters to ask if they have any regrets about their 2024 vote. Of the 6% of Trump voters who responded that they have regrets about supporting him, the third most common reason selected was “the President’s handling of domestic issues (such as healthcare, education, or immigration).” By comparison, “the President’s policies are hurting the economy” ranked seventh on the list.
Punting on this immigration fight is arguably a prime example of what voters hate about politics and politicians.
I conducted dozens of interviews with voters last year. I asked them what bothers them most about politics these days, and what they want from their leaders that they’re not getting. Across race, place, age, and partisanship, I hear the same themes, over and over.
What voters repeatedly tell me frustrates them about politics and politicians:
Too many are devoted to the status quo over delivering real change.
Too many are inauthentic, self-interested people who say one thing and then do another, consistently overpromising when they seek office and underdelivering once they get there.
What voters repeatedly tell me they want from politics and politicians:
Someone who’ll fight hard for us and put us first, above greedy corporations and ultra-wealthy donors, above their own political ambition, and above partisan agendas and bickering.
Someone who walks the walk, and follows through on promises.
Change Research recently polled on this question of what voters want from their representatives, honing in specifically on would-be Democratic primary voters, and my colleague Ben Greenfield wrote a great piece on the implications of those findings. Specifically, the poll asks Democrats, and Dem-leaning Independents, to choose a candidate in two hypothetical primary contests: a “moderate who will fight the Trump administration vigorously” versus a “progressive who will mostly lay low,” and a “moderate who will mostly lay low” vs. a “progressive who will fight the Trump administration vigorously.” In both contests, voters—across age, race, and strength of partisan attachment—overwhelmingly choose the fighter, regardless of whether we describe that candidate as ideologically moderate (90% selected) or progressive (95% selected). “The central axis on which likely Democratic primary voters are assessing candidates is not ideological,” Greenfield concludes, “it’s whether they’ll fight.”
Democrats campaigned in 2024 on a core premise: that Donald Trump would govern as a dangerous dictator, with contempt for the rule of law and in raw pursuit of his own power. That is now happening, out in the open, and voters have the opportunity to evaluate, for themselves, whether their elected officials can meet the moment. Are you actually going to fight back, or were you only saying he’s dangerous because you were asking for my vote? Are you going to do something to stop him?
I’d argue that’s the lens through which gettable voters are evaluating their leaders right now.