Will Democrats Doing "The Right Thing" Hand Congress to Republicans in November?
Title 42 and the Mid-Term Elections
The Biden Administration appears to be willing to let Title 42 expire on May 23rd. Title 42 is the public health rule that the Trump Administration invoked to prevent asylum seekers from entering the U.S. due to the Coronavirus pandemic. Critics of the application of Title 42 under Trump argue that the rule was inappropriately applied simply to restrict immigration.
The CDC under the Biden Administration has recently announced that it will allow Title 42 to end due to the “increased availability of tools to fight COVID-19” currently in place. The move is expected to more than double the current number of migrants entering the U.S. daily to 18,000.
With the mid-term elections fast approaching the move comes at a politically fraught time for President Biden and Democrats. The spectre of images like the one above of immigrants under a Texas bridge last September reappearing in the media have given many Democrats pause and they are speaking out against the change in policy. Barring intervention by the courts however, the Administration appears to be intent on allowing Title 42 to expire.
The risk for Democrats of course is that this will hand a potent issue to Republicans just before the November elections. The GOP is undoubtedly salivating over the opportunity to exploit what they believe is a winning issue for them. “Crisis at the Border”, “Open Borders Biden”, and “Border Out of Control” may be just some of the headlines that Republicans will gleefully promote.
This poses a dilemma as the President must choose between what may be the right thing to do and what may be the politically pragmatic thing to do. For now, apparently under pressure from immigration activists, Biden appears to be leaning strongly toward allowing Title 42 to expire. This path however must be weighed against the potential consequences.
Would this move be worth it if the border becomes the defining issue of the 2022 mid terms? The party which wins the House this November will be in control the next time a Presidential election is certified in January 2025. Lest anyone forget, the January 6th, 2021 insurrection was an effort to stop the House from certifying President Biden’s victory. Later that day, despite the violence, 139 House Republicans still voted against certification. How would a House controlled by Republicans in 2025 handle a certification vote when most of these 139 will likely still be in office?
President Biden’s approval rating has dropped precipitously since the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle. That was again a situation where withdrawing was arguably the right thing to do, but the potential political costs if things were to go poorly were enormous. Of course things did go poorly. The current topic du jour is the pending Supreme Court decision on abortion rights. If Roe v. Wade is overturned, this will undoubtedly rally many Democrats to the polls this November. That should be a net enthusiasm plus for Democrats. If immigration becomes the predominant issue however, that will only help Republicans.
The question “what is the right thing to do?”, isn’t always an easy one to answer. Is there any future where anyone, immigrants included, are better off with Republicans regaining control of Congress? One could say no, not when it is unclear if our Democracy would even survive such a development.
But is Biden capable of withstanding pressure from immigration activists on the left in order to avoid handing the GOP a powerful issue to motivate their base with as mid-terms approach? For now it appears that he is not. The consequences in 2025 and beyond may prove to be profound.