Derek Thompson

Here's a claim.

to expand their appeal in states and districts currently controlled by Republicans.

Democrats have to moderate to win.

Period.

How would you evaluate that statement?

I want to drill down on immigration a little bit.

It's a really interesting issue where it seems to me that the polling is relatively straightforward, that America is in some ways almost historically pro-immigration from the standpoint of do Americans think that immigration makes the country better?

I think these are questions that Pew and Gallup asks all the time.

And in general, that line has gone diagonally up.

Americans also don't seem to like chaos at the border or chaos anywhere.

That's right.

There's really not a lot of American voters that are like, what I really want is the feeling of chaos right outside of my door.

Absolutely.

Right.

I think your anti-chaos message has large purchase.

It's interesting to me that immigration, the moderate position, seems relatively easy to identify.

And yet policy, as it exists in the executive branch, seems to swing quite wildly from far right in Trump 1.0 to an incredibly...

different, lax, one could argue left-wing immigration policy under Biden, and then swinging back all the way under Trump 2.0 to ICE in the street.

What is it about immigration that makes it so hard for the moderate position that seems to be the mainstream American opinion on this issue to actually find a home in the White House?

The blowback at the polls is imaginary?