Friday, April 25, 2025

Is the Outrage Farming Working? – HotAir

April 21, 2025
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Is the Outrage Farming Working? – HotAir
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Democrats have been searching for some issue with which they could get political purchase, given how adrift they have been and how their popularity has plummeted. They needed something…anything…around which they could rally their party, get their ground troops mobilized, and most importantly, get some politically powerful group or another to come to their defense. 





Ironically, that issue is the kinda, sorta, maybe/maybe not botched deportation of a wife-beating MS-13 member who likely is a human trafficker. And, in the most bizarre twist, their strategy is working with one demographic that matters politically: well-educated upper-middle-class center and center-left voters. 

This is a group of voters who are relatively reliable for Democrats, so Trump’s immigration strategy isn’t driving a new bunch of people to the Democrats, but a significant number of these people had been sour on the Democrats and were shocked by how much they were gaslit on the issue of Joe Biden’s health and acuity. They really did believe what they had been told about “cheap fakes” and are inclined to trust the Pravda Media–still believing, despite all the evidence, that journalists are all about telling the truth. 

If you want to know who the 31% of Americans are who trust the media, the answer is this group of people. To a person, they will read a New York Times story and think that they are being given the straight scoop. 

Yes, such people exist. Give them an article from The Atlantic, and stars get in their eyes. Many of these people are good, decent people who react with outrage when the Establishment tells them to react with outrage. They pour out the love for politicians they are told to love. They believed the COVID narrative, believed Russian collusion, and even believed that Joe Biden was a competent president with a sharp mind. 





The story of Abrego Garcia has motivated these people unlike anything else I have seen in the second Trump administration, which explains why Democrats are flocking to Garcia like flies to dog poop. Elon Musk and DOGE may move the activist base, but the overeducated laptop class is flocking to Garcia. 

To understand why, you need to consider the psychology of this group of people. Unlike the activist bases of the two parties, or the pragmatic voters who are not political animals and who just want the government to work well and leave them alone, the well-educated laptop class focuses on policy as an intellectual exercise that bolsters their sense of being the good guys. The results of their policies are secondary to holding a class-approved opinion that fits neatly into an intellectual and values framework they can articulate. 

The “due process” argument hits the political erogenous zone for this cohort, and in a lot of ways, it has a lot more intellectual heft than many of the other arguments that they accept from the establishment. Due process is an important part of our Constitutional system, and ensuring that it is followed matters a lot. 





So when Van Hollen diverts Dana Bash from the obviously important question–is Abrego Garcia an MS-13 member?–you and I look at that and think the obvious: isn’t it important to know that if you are going to expend a ton of political capital on springing him from El Salvador? 

Most voters, after all, don’t really think that ensuring every i is dotted and every T is crossed to get a wife-beating gang-banger involved in human trafficking back to the United States. Even if he is flown back here, he will be put on a plane to another country because he really does have a deportation order. 

The answer, though, for the laptop class is “No, it doesn’t matter.” A fraction of that is because they want the legal niceties to be followed, and a larger fraction is that the Establishment has chosen to make this issue the “civil rights issue of our time.”





It may seem bizarre to you that the practical impact of having the courts rule on every single deportation order would make deporting people in any number logistically impossible, just as you and I get infuriated that sanctuary cities sneak murderers and child rapists out the back door and onto the streets in order to keep them away from ICE, but there is a large group of people who are not lefty activists who approve of these moves because they see it as the necessary price for maintaining an ethical society. 

As a practical matter, of course, this adherence to the rules only applies to Republicans. The same people applauded when Biden defied the Supreme Court a number of times, most famously in his many attempts to circumvent their rulings on student loan forgiveness. Not a one of these people did anything but applaud when Biden tried to tweet a Constitutional Amendment into existence, and none of these people thought for a moment about “due process” when people accused of trespassing in the Capitol were held in solitary confinement for months. Dozens of such cases exist, and if the same were done to any but the most violent prisoners, they would be appalled. 

 The Abrego Garcia case is not a political winner for the Democrats in itself, but it finally gives them a way to rally both their base–who are against deporting people–and the laptop class who are swayed by the “due process” argument. Gavin Newsom was smart to distance himself from the establishment Democrats on this issue–he is looking not to a shorter-term political advantage, but to position himself for a run in 2028. But Democrats in Congress need political traction right now. 





My own feelings are in between. I strongly believe that due process should be followed, but “due process” is actually a phrase similar to “reasonable” or “unreasonable”–in other words, circumstantial. What process is due in varying cases varies, just as “unreasonable” searches in one instance may be considered “reasonable” under other circumstances. 

Illegal aliens do not, in fact, have the same rights as citizens or legal aliens. The Trump administration does not have to prove Abrego Garcia is a member of MS 13–just show a reasonable suspicion that he is. Two immigration judges have already made that determination. As far as I can see, there was a process error–hardly the first in government history–but the outcome and intent were reasonable. 

Still, none of that matters to this particular population. They are uncomfortable, unlike the vast majority of Americans, with deportations at all, and have bought the due process argument hook, line, and sinker. Very few would be persuaded that he should have been deported, even if they viewed a video of him shooting somebody. They don’t care that he beat his wife. 





What they want, really, is that their impression that Trump is a tyrant to be confirmed, and this case has done it for them. 







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