Trump betting re-election on immigration, socialism

From the biggest stage in US politics, President Donald Trump made clear that on the defining issue of his presidency — immigration — he cannot or will not change his hardline approach heading into 2020.

Yet the Republican President has drawn a new frame around his Democratic opposition, warning in his second State of the Union address that the rise of socialism on the left threatens the nation’s core values.

Wednesday’s speech was not the opening salvo of the 2020 election. That debate began almost immediately after his 2016 victory. But Trump’s primetime address offered the clearest road map to date about his re-election message and how he plans to address cultural and demographic shifts that have clouded the political battlefield.

The first-term President is betting four more years that his aggressive argument — against socialism and illegal immigration — will ultimately preserve his coalition of white working-class men across the industrial Midwest. The group, perhaps more than any other, fuelled his razorthin victory in 2016.

It’s far from clear, however, whether the approach will do enough to repair his strained relationship with women, who left the GOP in droves last year in a suburban revolt that gave Democrats the House majority.

Wednesday marked a key moment in the early 2020 debate that highlights the struggle for both major political parties to coalesce behind an effective message as the next presidential election season gets under way.

Trump, in particular, needs to improve his political standing if he hopes to win re-election. He opens the election season as one of the weakest first-term presidents on record.

His approval rating during last month’s government shutdown fell to 34 per cent, its lowest mark in more than a year, according to a poll conducted by the Associated PressNORC Centre for Public Affairs Research.

In sharp contrast to the President’s appeal, Democrats have so far tried to embrace a message of unity and diversity with few direct appeals to the white working-class voters who abandoned Democrats in 2016.

Stacey Abrams, who lost her 2018 bid to become Georgia governor, was the first black woman to deliver the Democratic Party’s formal rebuttal to the President’s speech. Flanked by an audience that featured very few white men, she ticked off a list of Democratic priorities on healthcare, education and voting rights.

Yet more than anything else, immigration stood at the centre of his State of the Union message. Trump highlighted guests in the House chamber whose family had been killed by illegal immigrants, ignoring young immigrants in the crowd known as “Dreamers” who are fighting for legal status. He made the case that the fate of the working class is explicitly linked to the threat, real or imagined, posed by caravans of immigrants approaching the southern border.

“No issue better illustrates the divide between America’s working class and America’s political class than illegal immigration,” Trump argued.

“Wealthy politicians and donors push for open borders while living their lives behind walls and gates and guards,” he said. “Meanwhile, workingclass Americans are left to pay the price for mass illegal migration — reduced jobs, lower wages, overburdened schools and hospitals, increased crime and a depleted social safety net.”

Trump faces intense pressure from his own political base to take a hardline on immigration. Many conservatives were outraged last month when he ended the government shutdown without securing funding for his border wall. But even without that pressure, Trump’s core message throughout his political rise has centred on his opposition to illegal immigration. That will not change.