Comment by tptacek
5 years ago
Hold on. That might have been the prevailing view counted by the candidates on stage, but it's not the prevailing view of the Democratic electorate, or of the nominee (Biden "supports" urgent care for undocumented immigrants, but does not support enrolling them in a national health plan). There was a crystal healer shaman on the stage for several of the debates; you can't just do this by roll call.
I agree with you in spirit, that we're further left than the American left realizes. But on this particular, I think you're wrong.
That’s fair. My point wasn’t to really assert a conclusion about the Democratic Party as a whole, but rather to show that there is a robust social left in the US. To my knowledge, only two Western countries extend universal (rather than emergency) care for undocumented immigrants.
The broad US support for this is at least in large part as a response to the enormous levels of undocumented immigrants present as a result of what is widely seen (across the political spectrum, though for different reasons) as an incredible failure of the US immigration system. You can’t meaningdully assess position on an ideological spectrum based on comparing preferred policy responses without considering the differences in the objective circumstances to which the policy responses are directed.
There isn't broad support for this as a policy. Everyone knows about this issue because it's one of the least popular potential Democratic policies, with a strong majority in opposition, which is why Biden doesn't support it.
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>To my knowledge, only two Western countries extend universal (rather than emergency) care for undocumented immigrants.
Not to derail, but extending public health care to undocumented immigrants in a pandemic just makes sense. Undocumented doesn't mean vaccinated, so there's a clear public interest in minimizing the absolute number of COVID-19 carriers, no matter their legal status.