One thing you hear a lot from voters during election years is how they supposedly want the candidates to lay off the personal attacks against each other and spend more time talking about the issues. Yeah, right, that could be one of those things that voters like to say to appear highbrow when they really enjoy it, when one politician punches another in the nose, rhetorically, of course, in any case, if the issue at hand happens to be the combustible topic of immigration, it may just be a smart strategy to stay away from talking about it altogether. For one thing, elected officials tend to find it very difficult to thread the needle between being tough and compassionate. For another, this is one of those debates that’s all or nothing, black or white, with no room for nuance or common sense. Then there’s the fact that everyone seems to have their own solution, and they’re not the least bit interested in hearing anyone else’s and finally, the immigration issue is so emotionally charged and likely to offend that politicians tend to be vague or elusive or creative in the rewriting of history. We saw some of those tendencies play out during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

You would think that Democrats would start out with an advantage when talking about immigration, because they’re lucky enough to have that one essential characteristic. They’re not Republicans as such, they’re not talking about how immigrants are to cough up the bile of former President Donald Trump, quote, poisoning the blood of America, or threatening to deport 10 million or so undocumented immigrants and whoever else ends up caught up in the net when it comes to immigration. Democrats are not evil, but they’re not honest either. Most of the time. They’re tied up in knots and contradictions. They try to have it both ways. They want to please both labor unions that want less immigration and Latino organizations that want more. It’s no wonder that the part of Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris’s acceptance speech that briefly touched on immigration sounded like it was written to be delivered in fantasy land. Quote, I know we can live up to our proud heritage as a nation of immigrants and reform our broken immigration system. Harris said we can create an earned pathway to citizenship and secure our border America. We must also be steadfast in advancing our security and our values abroad. End quote, so Democrats like Harris promised different things to different groups and hope that no one pulls an old interview or connects the dots or calls out a flip flop or connects a falsehood. Just look at former President Barack Obama, who, at 63 seemed to be having a senior moment at the DNC in his own speech to delegates and the nation, he veered briefly into a few remarks about immigration and then promptly forgot his own record, referring to Harris and vice presidential nominee Tim Walsh. Obama vouched for their compassionate approach to the issue. Quote, they understand that we can secure our borders without tearing children away from their parents. Obama said, great, but in turn, who can vouch for Obama? Nobody. The 44th president, tore kids away from their parents, both at the border and in the interior as he went about deporting 3 million people, a grotesque achievement for which he earned the moniker deporter in chief. Some of those kids wound up housed in cages on the US Mexico border, and others were dumped into the foster care system, where they got snatched up by American couples and never saw their biological parents again.

But hey, at least you don’t hear Democrats viewing the kind of harsh rhetoric we hear from Republicans. I mean, that would be cruel, you.