Tamara Keith and Amy Walter on how immigration will affect the 2024 presidential election

Read the Full Transcript

• Amna Nawaz:

  How will immigration affect the 2024 presidential election?

  Time for some analysis from our Politics Monday team. That is Amy Walter of The Cook Political Report With Amy Walter and Tamara Keith of NPR.

  Good to see you both.

• Amy Walter, The Cook Political Report:

  Hello.

• Tamara Keith, National Public Radio:

  Good to be here.

• Amna Nawaz:

  You heard the reporting from Lisa earlier, saw the interview with Senator Murphy there.

  Amy, what this bill proposes is incredibly consequential, one of the biggest pieces of legislation for immigration in three decades in this country. The fact that the president was willing to go as far as he was, what does that say to you?

• Amy Walter, The Cook Political Report:

  Well, I think it says that Democrats know, including the president, how problematic this issue is for their party going into an election year.

  What I find even more interesting, and it's going to be a really interesting test for the issue of immigration, is next week. There's a special election in a congressional district. This is George Santos' seat on Long Island.

  The issue of immigration, not surprisingly, is playing a starring role with the Democrat there taking a position that sounds very much like Joe Biden, talking about being able to have more border security, supporting this plan that just was released by the Senate.

  The Republican candidate and Republicans in general attacking the plan, she has not supported the plan, and attacking the Democrats, including this one, as being part of the open border party. In other words, by the time next Tuesday comes around, and by Wednesday, when we have the results of the election, we will have at least our first, our very first test for whether this issue and the way Democrats are talking about it, the way Republicans are talking about it, which side can claim some sort of political victory.

  Again, it's a special, so we can't draw too many conclusions, but we will really get a sense for whether or not, for example, if Republicans lose, this strategy of just blaming everything on Biden may not work.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Yes.

  Tam, how are you looking at this? I mean, Republicans have probably their best shot at immigration reform. They have been clamoring for it for years.

• Tamara Keith:

  Right.

• Amna Nawaz:

  If this fails to go through because they're under pressure from President Trump, does that blow back on them from their base?

• Tamara Keith:

  Not from their base. I don't think it would blow back on them from their base.

  I mean, there is this argument that if this is the crisis they say it is, that it has to be dealt with right now — and this is an argument that you're hearing from people like James Lankford. If it has to be dealt with right now, then why wait until after the election? Why wait until, in theory, Trump is in office? And then you might still have a divided government, and you might not get this.

  So you're still — you're — at the best-case scenario, you're pushing this a year out, and worst-case scenario potentially way more gridlock. But Trump has made it abundantly clear that he does not want this. He was back out on the air today saying it's terrible, calling it amnesty, all of these things that it isn't.

  But it is a compromise. It is not the bill that former President Trump would want to sign. It's not the bill that the speaker of the House would author. But it is something that, in theory, if it actually could get to a floor vote, which it may not get in the Senate and it is even less likely to get in the House, it is something that could pass.

  It would be sort of a coalition of moderates and national security hawks, and it's a random coalition. You would lose all the people on the left and on the far right, but it could potentially pass. It may not get a chance to have that audition.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Speaking of those national security hawks, Amy, I want to ask you. The biggest piece of this bill is that Ukraine funding.

  Republicans largely remain opposed to it in the House.

• Amy Walter:

  That's right.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Are there enough of those national security hawks to get this across the finish line?

• Amy Walter:

  No, because this debate is really now about the border, and that national security piece of it is — has been sort of separated out.

  I mean, I think the fact that the speaker is saying, look, we're willing to do a stand-alone bill on Israel…

  (Crosstalk)

• Amna Nawaz:

  Just on Israel.

• Amy Walter:

  … not on Ukraine, tells you where the Republicans are. They do not see that holding up funding for Ukraine is a political problem for them or…

• Tamara Keith:

  With their base.

• Amy Walter:

  Right, with their base, or that it's a priority issue.

• Amna Nawaz:

  So, meanwhile, the 2024 primary season rolls on. President Biden now has his first primary win after South Carolina voted on Saturday. Take a look at these results.

  It is what you would call a decisive win, 96 percent of the vote there to Marianne Williamson' 2 percent to Dean Phillips' just under 2 percent there as well.

  Look, Amy, we know four years ago it was Black voters there that really resurrected his campaign. Did they show up with the same level of enthusiasm this time?

• Amy Walter:

  Obviously, turnout as down considerably because it wasn't competitive and it's very hard to get people excited to show up to vote in a race that's not competitive.

  I know why the Biden campaign wants to point to that 96 percent number and to the turnout in certain areas of the state that have significant African American population. It's to sort of tamp down the hand-wringing among many Democrats that the campaign has a base problem, has a problem especially with African American voters.

  I don't think this is going to make that case, because, as I said, it's not a real race. It was this — a race against candidates who didn't campaign. Where it did make a case, though, is against the idea that Dean Phillips has — who is one of those candidates there, has been raising for a while now that voters want an alternative, they want a younger alternative to Joe Biden.

  Clearly, they do not, or, at the very least, they do not want him to be that alternative.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Tam, there's also concerns more broadly about the Biden coalition, right, after there was this opinion headline in The Wall Street Journal that called Dearborn, Michigan, America's jihad capital.

  Biden issued a statement about Islamophobia and hate, and says we have to condemn it in all forms. How critical are the young voters, the Muslim and Arab voters, the voters of color, especially in a state like Michigan?

• Tamara Keith:

  So, every voter matters, especially in a state like Michigan or Georgia or Wisconsin or Nevada, the key swing states that are going to decide this election.

  In Nevada, for instance, it was very narrowly divided — decided. President Biden won by very few votes, same in Georgia. Michigan, he actually won by a bit more. But he had these very narrow victories in several key states, which means every little piece of margin matters.

  And, yes, young voters are a challenge that the Biden campaign is trying to figure out how to address, but they face all kinds of challenges. Like, young voters are not watching TV. They're not watching ads on cable. They are not consuming their news in a way that is easy to find them. And so there are a lot of barriers that they are facing that they're trying to figure out how to deal with.

  But, absolutely, they have a problem with young voters. They have a problem with voters of color, and they're trying to work on it.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Yes.

• Amy Walter:

  And that's — when I talked to a Democrat in the state of Michigan a couple of weeks ago, that was the exact point he made was, one of these groups alone wouldn't be enough to sink Biden's fortunes in the state, because he has a big enough cushion.

  But if you combine all three of those into one…

• Amna Nawaz:

  Yes.

  (Crosstalk)

• Amy Walter:

  … that's where it turns Michigan from a state that leans a little bit Democratic to absolute toss-up to maybe even going to Trump.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Tam, you mentioned Nevada. On the Republican side, on Tuesday, there's going to be a state-run presidential primary. Two days later, there's going to be a party-run presidential caucus. What's happening there?

• Tamara Keith:

  It's a mess, and it's confusing to voters. And many of them have already voted, early-voted in this primary that will matter zero for delegates in the Republican primary.

  The caucus is where it's at in terms of delegates, and Trump is largely unopposed there, because Nikki Haley isn't on the primary ballot. It's a big mess. But what is most interesting to me, though, is, this is one of those key swing states. And neither Trump nor Haley are really — Haley especially — not spending any time there.

  Trump hasn't spent a dollar on ads in the state, and this is a state that is going to matter later. But, right now, it's revealing that everything is kind of a mess.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Tamara Keith, Amy Walter, nice closing thought there.

  (Laughter)

• Amna Nawaz:

  Always good to see you, both. Thank you.

• Tamara Keith:

  You're welcome.