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Trump has a secret weapon. It's called the Democratic Party.

Ruben Navarrette Jr. on

Buttigieg declared his support for giving health insurance to illegal immigrants during the first Democratic debate in June. But a few months later, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, raised eyebrows among Mexican Americans when he said that he would send U.S. troops to Mexico to combat drug cartels "if American lives were on the line and if it was necessary to meet treaty obligations." The last time U.S. troops marched into Mexico, back in the mid-1800s, our neighbor lost half of its territory in a land grab. There was a treaty then, too, whose provisions the United States largely ignored.

Sanders has spent much of his career pandering to working-class whites who think they lose jobs to immigrants. In 2007, he told CNN's Lou Dobbs that he opposed the landmark bipartisan immigration bill proposed by Sens. Ted Kennedy and John McCain because it included "amnesty" for the undocumented. Now, during a recent visit to San Diego, Sanders promised to give legal status to recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and introduce a bipartisan immigration reform bill -- one that will probably resemble the one he helped kill a dozen years ago.

And Biden started out defending President Obama's high number of deportations and telling activists who brought it up to "vote for Trump." Recently, he has adopted a kinder and gentler take on immigration. Biden has acknowledged that the Obama approach was too harsh, especially in breaking up families. His campaign said in a statement that the candidate "understands the pain felt by every family across the U.S. that has had a loved one removed from the country, including under the Obama-Biden administration." He promises a humane version of immigration enforcement.

These quick-change artists seem to be driven by political expediency. The most important quality of a president is character. The Democratic front-runners don't appear to have much of it.

To beat Trump, Democrats must be at the top of their game. Yet, oftentimes, they can't get out of their own way.

 

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Ruben Navarrette's email address is ruben@rubennavarrette.com. His daily podcast, "Navarrette Nation," is available through every podcast app.

(c) 2020, The Washington Post Writers Group


 

 

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