By Gotham-sized margins, New Yorkers say illegal aliens are at least a "somewhat serious" problem, with nearly half saying the problem is "very serious."
Given a choice between "New Yorkers have already done enough for new migrants and should now work to slow the flow of migrants to New York" and that the city should "accept new migrants and work to assimilate them into New York," the overwhelmingly Democrat residents of the Big Apple picked "done enough" by a lopsided 53 to 47 in this Siena College poll.
"Go away," New Yorkers explained.
"Big deal, one poll," I can hear you say. And that was my first reaction, too. But what made this story ping my radar was that the Washington Post — unofficial mouthpiece for the lefty establishment — chose not to run it as a straight news story, but as an opinion piece by Aaron Blake bemoaning that "panicky Democrats don’t need anything else to fret about ahead of the 2024 election."
Blake warns that American opinion is "shifting in a more concerned and immigration-skeptical direction — and in a particularly troublesome way for President Biden and his party."
To be fair, Biden did broadly hint — even before he was sworn in — that border security ranked lower in his priorities than "landing a man on the sun," "getting to the bottom of this whole Belgium thing," and "annexing the Sudetenland."
"The pro-immigration moment that Donald Trump rather unwittingly ushered in appears to be coming to a close."
I hate to poop on Mr. Blake's dreamscape, but Trump did not usher in anything like a pro-immigration moment. In those states where illegals have always been a problem, people have said — surprise! — that they're a problem. The genius of Republican governors Greg Abbott in Texas and Florida's Ron DeSantis is that they made illegals a New York problem, a Chicago problem, and even a Martha's Vineyard problem.
Gov. Abbott, what have your buses unleashed?
Quite a lot, actually. A Fox News poll last week showed that most Democrats are "very" concerned about border security, and another recent poll had three-quarters (!!!) of Democrats calling the issue an “emergency” or a “major problem.”
Hat tip to Blake for both of those links, even if I'm sure his reaction to those polls was the polar opposite of mine.
Earlier today, I wrote about a Democratic polling firm that advised Presidentish Joe Biden to rejigger his economic message to black voters the same way he would for swing voters — because both groups have had it up to here with Bidenomics.
It's amazing how similar Americans' opinions become when we're all being negatively impacted by the same issues.
Recommended: 'RIP Mr. President'
