Why Democrat Strategists Want A New Civil War

With 2024 presidential polling neck-and-neck, other polling suggests that roughly half of Americans believe that another civil war is likely.

This persistent fear is now being played out before our very eyes, and you’d better believe campaign strategists are behind the scenes here.As reported in The Hayride on Friday, the White House is in full offensive posture as Texas and the federal government square off over immigration and even federalism itself. After Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott refused to back down on the Lone Star State’s placing of razor wire at the U.S./Mexico border, the Biden Administration took a sizeable chunk out of the state’s expanding energy economy, citing man-made climate change as the rationale.

After a surprising 5-4 SCOTUS ruling against placing the razor wire, Abbott praised the Texas National Guard for continuing to “hold the line” and has signaled that the fight has only begun.

This all stops short of President Joe Biden sending in Border Patrol agents or National Guardsmen to snip the coils of barbed concertina wire. Or Abbott activating his own state militia in the form of the Texas National Guard or the unarmed Texas State Guard to repel any wire-cutting. But it does demonstrate a dramatically and slowly escalating conflict along the border — one that may be either presidential re-election year politics or a long overdue and inevitable conflict concerning federalism (and perhaps both).

Over the past week, it has become a sport to opine whether the U.S. is headed to a second civil war. It’s now a joke on social media, with users posting what obnoxious vehicle they’ll ride during Civil War 2, or what they’ll wear to it.

The Internet hijinks would be absolutely hilarious if not for one staggering fact: the Left now has a taste for exaggeration, and people believe them. Ask any Democrat what happened on Jan. 6, 2021, and they’ll likely claim it was a full-blown “insurrection” without batting an eye.

On Friday the Biden Administration drew a desperate picture for the Left: that clean-burning natural gas export projects needed to be slowed down because inaction would cause “historic hurricanes and floods” and “wildfires destroying whole neighborhoods and forcing families to leave their communities behind,” not to mention “record temperatures affecting the lives and livelihoods of millions of Americans, especially the most vulnerable.” If that’s not exaggeration, what is?

See the picture, now? Let’s roll the calendar back a couple of years. Fears of systemic racism in every juncture of American life led to violent protests during the “Summer of Love.” An almost cult-like following of Silicon Valley data crunchers led to forced shutdowns as this country has never seen during government reactions to COVID-19 a year later.

Mental images of armed insurrection, lynching, and deaths due to rampant disregard for public health have Democratic activists motivated — as they should be if such things were provably and undeniably true.

Add this to their absolute disdain for Donald Trump and the reversal of Roe v. Wade and you have a motivated base ready to deny Trump a new term. Yet the polling remains a see-saw when it comes to a Trump versus Biden scenario in November (which is statistically unavoidable unless Biden is replaced or Trump is deemed ineligible). Strategists on the Left therefore need something new. Something damning to the right. Something that would make even Texas reconsider its three decades of GOP rule.

A little violence along the Texas/Mexico border would fit that bill nicely. Even just the slightest altercation between a citizen and a Border Patrol agent would do it. Imagine how photos of a large crowd of Texas fending off a crowd of incoming migrants would be abused. And God-forbid anyone be shot or trampled. “Leave no crisis unexploited,” as the old adage goes, including speculative crises.

Forget bringing the fight to New Mexico, Arizona, and California, which also share a border with Mexico (half of it, combined) but which have complacent Democratic governors. The focus is on Texas, which 1) has endured the most amount of illegal border crossings, and 2) has a governor who has chided the Biden Administration, from bus rides for illegal border-crossers to blue states to floating border buoys in the middle of the Rio Grande.

Politics aside, there is a real crisis at hand, especially in Texas. Since President Biden took office, U.S. Customs and Border Protection has logged more than 5.4 million illegal border crossings, plus at least 1.5 million “gotaways” (border-crossers who were detected but who were never apprehended). House Republicans are busy trying to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, with Biden visiting El Paso in an attempt to save face.

The rhetoric is amping up as a result, with little regard to recklessness.

“Biden is, unbelievably, fighting to tie the hands of Governor Abbott and the State of Texas, so that the Invasion continues unchecked,” Republican prospective nominee Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Texas has rightly invoked the Invasion Clause of the Constitution, and must be given full support to repel the invasion.”

U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio, called on Biden to “establish sole federal control of the Texas National Guard now,” echoed by the far-Left of the Democratic spectrum with their disregard for the Constitution on full display.

ANALYSIS: It may be that both sides are locked into a standoff that cannot be expediently resolved before the November general election.

But keep in mind that the last time we saw anything close to meaningful, comprehensive immigraiton reform was after the Elián González custody standoff between the U.S. and Cuba in 2000. This may have given George W. Bush the narrowest of leads in the presidential election (freedom-minded Cuban voters in Flordia, especially) and provided the public mandate for comprehensive immigration reform legislation in 2002.

It may be that the public needs an Elián-like showdown to understand just how dire the situation has gotten along the border. Biden’s strategists may wish to frame Abbott’s actions as Insurrection 2.0. But if concertina wire is this decade’s big immigration standoff, then Biden does not want to play the role of Cuba. In other words, Biden can only go so far without becoming the bad guy, especially should a poster child like Elián emerge from the silver blankets in detention areas along the border. There are surely such stories to tell already.

The Democrats’ only hope is that any of Abbott’s supporters will behave badly, thus propelling leftist blockwalkers, phone bankers, and other activists into the fray for Biden’s second term.

Abbott can win this if he holds firm and steady. And if Trump wins another term, another round of immigration reform may be probable. At the very least, Republicans would have some wind to their backs going into the general — again, if they hold firm, even when the bad visuals inevitably circulate as “proof” that Republicans are wanting Civil War II. The Left will believe it, but the Right should not feed it.