Democrats, fix your messaging
Note: I don't personally think the views espoused in the following post are good, I just think they have the potential of convincing a meaningful chunk of the electorate to turn on Trump, or at least explore other options. They are not my views.
In 2022, Republican Representative Dan Crenshaw posted the following in a Twitter conversation, and I think it's a good summary of the angle that Democrats should take to defend both military funding for Ukraine and foreign aid in general.
Investing in the destruction of our adversary's military, without losing a single American troop, strikes me as a good idea. You should feel the same.
The US doesn't engage in international humanitarian and military assistance because it's a morally good nation. It does so because it's cheaper and safer to fix problems abroad than let them grow until they touch our borders. Or, in some cases, it's this but a step or two removed - aid is used to improve our PR or hurt the PR of an adversary, even if the specific issue being addressed isn't at risk of directly impacting the US. This shouldn't be a tough sell.
Let's look at immigration. First, my personal view: Immigration is good (and I say this as someone whose family has been in the territory now known as the USA since 1635, if not earlier)[1]. However, the following strike me as arguments that should be tried:
- In defense of USAID: Immigrants make the trek to the US because the US is better than their home countries. If gangs didn't control cities, or disease didn't run rampant, fewer people would flee and try to claim asylum. It's both more humane and almost certainly more cost-effective to invest in aid to foreign nations to improve their conditions, compared with trying to prevent people from crossing the many thousands of miles of US border. In addition, foreign aid is amazing PR.
- In defense of immigration: Personally, I think the US is awesome[2]. I think the ideals of freedom and innovation that have made us the richest, most powerful nation in the world are strong enough that they can win more adherents. I trust in the strength of American exceptionalism and the knowledge that people who move here will be won over to that mindset. Concerns about immigrants staying loyal to their own culture instead of assimilating are very revealing in terms of how Republicans judge America. I think it's great enough to win over hearts and minds. Why doesn't the GOP agree, as much as they claim to love America?
- In defense of immigrants: I'll be the first to admit that I don't know the difficulties of making it from, say, South America to the US border without legal documentation. I've thankfully never been in the situation where it's been necessary. However, I've read about the process, and it isn't an ordeal I'd wish on anyone. Let's look at one specific stretch: Getting from South to Central America. The Darién Gap is a hundred-kilometer-wide band of mountains and swamps that separates Panama from Colombia. There is no infrastructure. There are no roads. There are only primitive settlements and fancy things like law enforcement or medical assistance are nonexistant. If you get an injury that prevents you from moving quickly, you die. If you run out of food, you die. If you get caught in one of the frequent flash floods, you die. If you encounter a jaguar, or get tagged by a pit viper, you die. If you run into one of the gangs or paramilitary factions active in the lawless region, you die. Nonetheless, hundreds of thousands of people each year make this crossing in order to escape their home countries. Think about the level of strength, determination, and willingness to take risks in order to reach a better life that this demonstrates. Is there any better way to describe the American ideal?
Similar arguments exist for other topics. Dan Crenshaw did a good job of summarizing the one for foreign military aid. Public health research is a massive subsidy to the US biomedical industry - the government funds the unlikely-to-directly-make-money basic research that corporations build upon to reap massive profits. Nationalized healthcare makes it easier for companies to get started, because it's one fewer thing that entrepreneurs and small-business owners need to worry about. Focus on the financial side of a lot of social safety nets. It's cheaper to subsidize someone's housing and help them get a job than it is to throw them in prison. I know that isn't the reason we should be working to improve people's lives - we should be doing it because it's the morally right thing to do - but when it's also the more efficient economic path, make that the main focus. Do a better job of tailoring your arguments to the audience you need to reach, not the audience that you wish existed.
[1] Most immigrants fall into two groups: The first, generally legal immigrants, are those with skills sufficient to get them one of the limited visas, either for work or for school. The second, which contains most undocumented immigrants (although I don't know if they make up a majority of this group), are people in search of a better life who are driven and determined enough to make the often-treacherous trek to the US. A person who's able to survive crossing the Darién Gap and then working for years in a sub-minimum-wage job just to send a few dollars back to their family, so that they can eventually make the trip themselves, is a far better embodiment of the strengths of America than some trust fund kid. In addition, if you're complaining about the birth rate and saying we need more people, and then saying we need to kick out all the immigrants, and you're predominantly identifying those immigrants by looking for people with brown skin, you are racist.
[2] Or at least has the potential to be. There are clearly quite a few shortcomings at the moment.