Democrats Very Unhappy With Biden Border Crisis

This isn’t great news for Joe Biden. Democrats are almost as unhappy with Biden’s border policies as the general public at large, according to the Pew Research Center. 

More Republicans are inclined to call the situation at the border a “crisis,” but even Democrats call it a major problem. 

The survey is brutal for Biden, although we should remember that disapproval of and refusing to vote for somebody are two different things. 

Democrats disapprove of the U.S. government’s handling of migrant crossings at the southern border more now than at any other recorded point during Joe Biden’s presidency, according to a new report from the Pew Research Center.

Seventy-three percent of surveyed Democrats rate the government’s handling of the influx of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border as “somewhat bad” or “very bad,” according to the report — only 11 percentage points lower than Democrats’ disapproval ratings in 2019 during Donald Trump’s presidency.

The numbers from the report released Thursday mark a grim trend for Biden. Last year, Pew recorded that 62 percent of Democrats disapproved of the government’s handling of the border, up from 56 percent of Democrats disapproving in 2021. Pew does not track immigration attitudes every year.

We all know the tendency of partisans to be reluctant to critique presidents of their own party, regardless of which party you belong to. People want to appear to support “their guy” whether they privately approve of their actions or not.

So when disapproval crosses the threshold of willingness to say out loud to a stranger that a person is unhappy with a president of his own party, that is a huge red flag. 

Politico bent over backwards to put the onus on Republicans for the continuing border crisis, signaling that they consider the criticism of the president unfair. 

But Americans aren’t buying what they are selling. 

Before Senate Republicans tanked the border security deal last week, Biden said in a statement that he was “ready to solve the problem” and “secure the border.” 

“Do they want to solve the problem?” Biden said. “Or do they want to keep playing politics with the border? I’ve made my decision.” 

As the bill looked doomed to advance earlier this month, Biden said, “Every day between now and November, the American people are going to know that the only reason the border is not secure is Donald Trump and his MAGA Republican friends.”

And why would Americans buy it? Biden has spent 3 years ginning up the crisis, and his proposed “solution” was little more than a bid to normalize mass illegal immigration by pouring billions into processing border crossers, not preventing them from doing the crossing. 

It is the latter that is so awful, not the pace at which they get processed. Everybody knows that. 

Still, Democrats are much friendlier to the president’s desire to normalize and essentially legalize border crossings than Republicans, indicating that most of them will at least reluctantly back the president in his political fight with Republicans over how to deal with the border crisis. No surprise there. 

In general Americans want quicker decisions on asylum claims, more legal immigration opportunities, and more deportations. Americans remain pro-immigration and anti-illegal immigration. 

You can read Pew’s entire survey here and read the tea leaves regarding the political impact this will have in November. 

None of this is good news for Biden, but just how damaging it will be is unclear and likely depends on whether he can spread the blame around. 

On that, I am skeptical. Biden has to convince people that the past three years of open borders didn’t happen. That seems unlikely.