Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) bashed the Republican Party‘s views on immigration as being hateful, before largely echoing its actual position.
Slotkin outlined her views on the future of the Democratic Party’s strategy in an interview with the New York Times released Thursday, following her work over the past eight months to get the listless party back on track. She touched on immigration, criticizing the Republican position, though seemingly unknowingly aligning closer with its views than her own party’s.
She argued that most Americans believe the United States needs immigration, but “they just want them to come here through legal, vetted channels.”
“The Republicans are fomenting anti-immigrant hate as a policy and a strategy, and Democrats are so scared of offending either immigration groups or people to the left of them — maybe they’re in a primary,” she said. “They are concerned about saying: ‘No, not everyone gets to be here. Not everyone has the right to live in the United States,’ and we, like every other country in the world, get to know who and what is coming across our borders.”
The first point is almost word-for-word President Donald Trump’s frequently stated position on immigration. Saying that not everyone in the world has a right to live in the U.S. is a common right-wing position on immigration, while the common left-wing position is that the U.S. is a nation of immigrants, and so should always be open to those who want to come here.
Elsewhere in the interview, Slotkin argued that a younger generation of Democratic leaders should take power, and that those who have been in office for long periods are largely out of touch. She urged the Democratic Party to adopt “Alpha Energy” and take a more aggressive approach.
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Her wish for a younger generation of Democratic leaders might backfire, as younger Democrats are much further left than the old guard, in direct contrast to her centrist views.
Slotkin also left open the possibility that she could run for president in 2028, dodging answering whether or not she’d run by saying, “It’s just not where my head is right now.”