This is an adapted excerpt from the Aug. 7 episode of “Alex Wagner Tonight,” guest hosted by Ali Velshi.
The last time Democrats sought to hold onto the White House after four years in power was in 2012, when then-President Barack Obama was running against Republican candidate Mitt Romney.
It probably surprised a lot of people that young undocumented immigrants had chosen to spend their time and energy protesting … President Obama.
Romney was not the most conservative candidate in the Republican Party, even back then. But he had staked out an aggressive hard-right position on the issue of immigration, running on a platform of “self-deportation” — making life so hard for immigrants in this country that they have no choice but to leave.
Given that, it probably surprised a lot of people that young undocumented immigrants had chosen to spend their time and energy protesting … President Obama.
They held mass demonstrations outside the White House where many were arrested. They showed up at his campaign offices in California, carrying signs that read, “Obama stop deporting Dreamers.” Protesters even held a hunger strike sit-in at Obama’s campaign offices in the then-swing state of Colorado.
At issue were protections for Dreamers, people who were brought to this country without legal authorization as children, many of whom had lived in the U.S. almost their entire lives. Obama supported protections for those Dreamers, but he insisted that he could not grant them those protections alone. He said the Republican-controlled Congress would have to send him a bill.
But then, in June of 2012, right in the middle of the campaign, something remarkable happened: Obama came around and decided to try. He announced that he would grant protection to thousands of Dreamers through executive order.
The pressure worked and Obama was re-elected with strong support from the Latino community, despite the protests.
However, much to the chagrin of the Obama administration, the protests didn’t stop. Many of those Dreamers were now protected, but there were still some who weren’t. And the parents of those Dreamers could still be deported at any moment. So those activists kept pushing, even interrupting the president during speaking events.
Obama, again, insisted that he did not have the power to take those actions alone. But activists kept the pressure on. The following year, Obama moved again, using another executive order to shield even more Dreamers from deportation and deprioritize the deportation of people without criminal records.
There were plenty of people at the time who questioned the strategy of those protesters, who asked why they weren’t protesting Romney and the Republicans in Congress who were blocking progress on immigration reform; but those protesters understood a key part of how social movements work. They understood that sometimes in order to make real change you have to target the people who are moveable, the people who want you in their coalition, the people who actually care.
That is both the burden and the beauty of what it means to be part of a functioning, big-tent political party that’s responsive to social change — to be on the side of what the late Rep. John Lewis called “good trouble.”
That is both the burden and the beauty of what it means to be part of a functioning, big-tent political party.
On Wednesday, at a rally in Detroit, Vice President Kamala Harris was interrupted by a group of demonstrators protesting the war in Gaza. After their second interruption, Harris shut down the protesters, telling them, “If you want Donald Trump to win, then say that. Otherwise, I’m speaking.”
That’s a snappy line that makes for a good soundbite and it’s undeniably true that she will be a better president for their cause than Donald Trump. But, as those immigration protesters proved back in the Obama administration, these issues are more complicated than “we’re better for you than the other guys.”
Harris has already proven she is the kind of thoughtful leader who listens and that she understands the nuance of this particular issue, even while some continue to insist that neither nuance nor context matters on this story.
Her campaign presents a real opportunity to reset the relationship with the varied communities expressing dissatisfaction over this war, and America’s role in it.
But will the Harris campaign use this as an opportunity to listen? And can those protesters use this as an opportunity to be heard?
Join Ali Velshi, Rachel Maddow and many others on Saturday, Sept. 7, in Brooklyn, New York, for “MSNBC Live: Democracy 2024,” a first-of-its-kind live event. You’ll get to see your favorite hosts in person and hear thought-provoking conversations about what matters most in the final weeks of an unprecedented election cycle. Buy tickets here.
