Sen. Murphy Accidentally Reveals Dems' Favorite Americans

"A gaffe is when a politician tells the truth," Michael Kinsley wrote maybe 30 years ago, "some obvious truth he isn’t supposed to say." Think of the time when EV-addict Presidentish Joe Biden promised in 2021 that "We’re going to keep at it to ensure the American people are paying their fair share for gas.” Or when Speaker Nancy Pelosi was using every trick in the book to move ObamaCare through the House in 2009 and said, "We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it."

Enter, stage left, one Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) speaking to MSNBC's Chris Hayes on Wednesday night about the Americans that Democrats "care about most."

I'll give you a hint: they aren't.

Murphy and Hayes were speaking about the ongoing plight of "undocumented Americans" after nasty Republican senators torpedoed a bill that would have given Democrats most of what they wanted while giving Republicans almost nothing. The bill would have effectively established a very high floor — not a ceiling — on the number of illegal aliens who would be allowed to cross our nonexistent southern border on their voyage to becoming undocumented Americans.

Previous immigration reform bills involved a tit-for-tat between Democrats and Republicans. Democrats would get a path to citizenship for illegals already in the country, and Republicans would get to pretend they'd gotten something to improve border security.

But Murphy said that wasn't the arrangement this time. "This is also not 2013 any longer," he told Hayes. "When we ran that play last back then, there were a couple hundred people showing up every day applying for asylum. Today, on some days, there are 8,000. And the reality is, is that the bulk of this country does not think that that’s right or sustainable and wants us to change the reality at the border."

So far, so good, right?

Not really. While Murphy correctly nailed the mood of the country — poll after poll shows that Biden's border chaos is a real concern — before that, he briefly pulled back the curtain on who Washington Democrats really care about.

"Well, I mean, Chris, that’s been a failed play for 20 years," on immigration reform. "So you are right that that has been the Democratic strategy for 30 years, maybe, and it has failed to deliver for the people we care about most, the undocumented Americans that are in this country."

Emphasis added because I just couldn't help myself.

I'd also add that in party politics, a party member's biggest concern isn't for the welfare of the country as a whole, but for their favored voters. Ponder on that for a moment.

It gets worse, if you can believe that. Murphy continued:

Now, this bill still had in it some really important things for migrant rights, including a right to representation and earlier work permits and the biggest expansion of visas in 30 years. It’s not a pathway to citizenship, but it is something substantial for people that actually care about migrants. But in the end, all of this didn’t matter because, as it turns out, Republicans are just absolutely allergic to fixing the problem at the border because they are so used to having this be their perennial election year issue.

Note the subtle sleight-of-hand barely on display. Biden broke the border to import what he hopes will be millions of new Democrat constituents. But it's evil Republicans who stand in the way of Biden fixing it. We've seen this move repeatedly in recent weeks. It's still important though that you see how smoothly Democrats play the joker in their deck.

Here's the clip: