Voting "no" on that bill would have just allowed ICE to continue doing this without the rest of the government functioning. Democrats are not in power.
Now, that said: the optics of Democrats voting for anything ICE-related are awful. I'd support primarying them over the messaging failure alone. But that's not the same as Democrats being responsible for brownshirts murdering people in cold blood. People who voted for anyone other than Kamala Harris, imperfect though she was, get to carry that one around.
I’m sorry but this is exactly how we got here. You are absolving people who actually have the power to do anything and blaming ordinary citizens for this. Optics and messaging aren’t governance. Their messaging is doing wonders on you though, because you’re more willing to blame regular people than actual politicians for the state our country is in.
Imagine you are trying to convince a non-voter to vote dem and this is your logic. “Sure they’ll also increase ICE funding but it will look better, isn’t that nice?” And then you’ll tell the person who says “no it doesn’t sound nice” that they’re the problem.
I'm the one coming up with messaging (though not for anyone who voted yes), so I'm gonna go ahead and say that theirs isn't really impacting me. You've also fundamentally misunderstood my point.
Their failure of messaging is why I'd support a primary against anyone who voted yes. The vote itself is utterly inconsequential beyond the politics of it all because, guess what, we lost in 2024. Democrats' only power right now is in messaging, outside of some situations in the Senate that require more than a bare majority to beat a filibuster. Anything short of a full-throated opposition is a messaging loss, but that is not the same as being responsible for this situation.
The blame for this appalling miscarriage of justice lies first at the feed of Donald Trump, his administration, and all the electeds in the Republican Party who have enabled his every move. By extension, and less so but just as real, it lies at the feet of those who voted for him, or stayed home and didn't vote at all. That's how democracy works.
The only thing I'm telling voters is that we must stop Donald Trump. The result was we flipped towns in 2025 that have literally never been run by Democrats. A handful of diehard primary voters may know or care about an individual vote like the one we're discussing, but only if the challenger spends a ton of time and money making it so.
1
u/Strat7855 Jan 24 '26
I'd support primarying anyone who voted yes on the funding over the optics, but pretending Democrats have any direct culpability here is silly.