President Trump’s favorite immigration agitator is back to dispense more rules for the road for 2020 Democratic presidential contenders. Blue aspirants most recently dealt with Univision anchor and open borders Hispanic particularist Jorge Ramos when he subjected them to a withering inquisition on immigration at the third Dem debate in Houston on Sept. 12. The DNC gave this proudly non-objective activist pretending to be a journalist a nationally televised platform that he promptly used to diminish the personal standing of the candidates on the debate stage. Each Dem was forced to kowtow to Ramos, knowing full well that progressive party orthodoxy demanded full acceptance of his pro-illegal immigration tenets. It’s not hard to picture the beaming smiles that must have abounded inside the Trump White House as this progressive witch trial unfolded.
Ordering, Not Asking
We are now less than a month from votes finally being cast in Iowa, and Ramos is once again being trotted out and granted a high-profile establishment soapbox from which to threaten and bully the Dem field. In a Jan. 10 op-ed for The New York Times, Ramos struck his usual pose as The Voice for the entire Latino electorate in America. “As was the case in 2016, if Democrats want to have any chance of defeating Mr. Trump they will need the strong support of Latino voters,” Ramos warned. “This time, however, they will have to work extra hard to get it.”
More important than Ramos’s false attempts to portray Latinos in America as a monolithic voting bloc in full accord with his personal beliefs is his leftist establishment-enabled demand that Dem contenders dance to his radical tune on immigration – or else.
In his NYT op-ed, Ramos demonized Dem sacred cow Barack Obama for his administration’s alleged (and highly disputable) aggressive deportations of illegal aliens. Ramos worryingly noted that current 2020 Dem frontrunner Joe Biden has stated that he “will not stop all deportations if you commit a crime that’s a felony.” He then contrasted this with top-tier candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) vow that he would submit an immigration reform bill immediately upon entering the White House.
Ramos then tellingly wrote:
“The differing positions among Democratic candidates on important topics like deportations and the separation of immigrant families is causing fear among Hispanic voters and driving them away from the party. If Democrats really want to win Hispanic votes in the Nov. 3 election, they must stop making excuses and promise to avoid President Obama’s mistakes. If they fail to do this, they risk alienating Latino voters and losing the election.”
It is impossible not to conclude that Ramos is decreeing here that supporting the deportation of illegal aliens who have committed felonies is a harrowing and divisive position for Dems to take that would cost them the presidential election. By his glum rejection of “differing” points of view on this topic, he is declaring that it is unacceptable for the eventual Dem nominee to hold such a policy stance.
He’ll Be Here All Year, Folks
Jorge Ramos (Photo by Paul Marotta/Getty Images)
This is the crushing anchor that powerful forces inside the Democratic Party and within the highest ranks of its big-box media allies are seemingly determined to fasten around the necks of 2020 Dem candidates. By trotting out Ramos just before voting begins in Iowa, The New York Times is sending the message yet again that this man is going to be a factor in blue circles throughout the coming year. The party standard bearer will have to put up with this most unwelcome nuisance chiding and wagging his finger all summer and into the Fall, even as he or she will have to tangle one-on-one with an unconventional incumbent president who is unusually gifted at taking advantage of controversy, division, and weakness within his opponents’ ranks.
The Trump administration can only be grateful that its political rivals remain blind to the very real damage they are inflicting upon themselves by foisting the abrasive and uncompromising Ramos onto the national stage. Allowed full rein, he will continue to make Democrat candidates appear small as they cower in the shadow of his bully pulpit. And by forcibly pushing them ever closer to a full-throttle open-borders immigration platform, he may very well seal their electoral doom in the Heartland and working-class states that so decisively rejected Dems in 2016.
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