OR, ALTERNATELY, CENTRIST THINK TANKS COULD JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP

The Bulwark tells us that a new center-left think tank is begging Democrats not to say "Abolish ICE":

DEMOCRATS RISK FALLING into a “trap” of Donald Trump’s making if they revive calls for the abolition of ICE, warns an upstart Democratic think tank in a new memo that reads, in part, as an emotional plea to others in the party.

The memo, put together by Searchlight Institute and released on Wednesday, draws a direct comparison between the anger felt by voters following last week’s shooting of Renee Nicole Good by an ICE agent in Minneapolis and the killing of George Floyd by police officer Derek Chauvin in the same city in 2020. The calls to “defund the police” in the wake of that tragedy, the group writes, may have felt righteous in the moment. But it constituted bad policy when adopted literally, and handed a massive cudgel to Republicans electorally. The same, writes Blas Nuñez-Neto, a senior policy fellow at Searchlight, is true of “Abolish ICE” now.

“‘Abolish ICE’ is not some proxy for more humane immigration enforcement, or to change ICE’s culture to adhere to due process, or to impose accountability on rogue officers. Itʼs advocating for an extreme,” the memo reads. “Unless you truly believe that the United States should not have an agency that enforces immigration and customs laws within our borders, and you want to increase illegal immigration, you should not say you want to abolish ICE.” Instead, the memo encourages Democrats to adopt an alternative approach toward ICE, one it calls “Reform and Retrain.”

I need to make a few points here. First, it's hilarious that the Searchlight Institute -- a group headed by Adam Jentleson, a former aide to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and formed with advice from Seth London, a venture capitalist and (in Politico's words) "adviser to major Democratic donors," is an "upstart" think tank.

Second, I'd like to remind Searchlight that Democrats won the House, the Senate, and the presidency in the immediate aftermath of George Floyd's murder. Joe Biden became the first (and still only) American presidential candidate to win more than 80 million votes. If "Defund the police" was such a damaging slogan, why wasn't it damaging in real time?

And the public doesn't think abolishing ICE is extreme. According to YouGov polling, 46% of U.S. strongly or somewhat support abolishing ICE, while 43% strongly or somewhat oppose abolition.

But the centrist think tanks are obsessed with ths now. Here's a Fox News story about another centrist think tank, Third Way:

Center-left think tank Third Way advised the Democratic Party to avoid calls to "Abolish ICE" in favor of immigration reform in a new memo released on Tuesday....

While Third Way agreed with the Democratic Party that the Trump administration's immigration policies were "defined by excess, escalation, and lawlessness," the group cautioned against pushing for a complete elimination of all immigration enforcement.

"The impulse is emotional," the memo read. "The slogan is simple. But politically, it is lethal. Every call to abolish ICE risks squandering one of the clearest opportunities in years to secure meaningful reform of immigration enforcement — while handing Republicans exactly the fight they want. This piece argues for a harder and smarter approach: abolish abuses, not ICE."

Is this bad messaging? Would "abolish abuses, not ICE" be better messaging? And while maybe it would be politically risky to advocate abolition without replacement, what's the difference between saying "abolish abuses, not ICE" and saying "ICE should be burned to the ground and replaced with an entirely new agency"?

But that's not the point I'm here to make. What I really want to say is that if Searchlight and Third Way care about the electoral propsects of the Democratic Party, they should shut the fuck up about this.

Is saying "Abolish ICE" bad for Democrats' future electoral prospects? Under these conditions, I suspect not. But I could be wrong! However, I'm not wrong to point out that it hurts the Democratic Party electorally every time a centrist think tank races off to the press saying, "Look how radically left-wing the Democrats are! No wonder they can't win elections! They're out of step with the American public!"

On ICE in January 2026, angry Democrats don't appear to be out of step with the American public. But when the press reports that Democrats are out of step, that reinforces a narrative that is very harmful to Democrats. Yet centrist think tanks spread these harmful messages as often as they possibly can. Why, you'd almost imagine that they want to hurt Democrats' electoral prospects. You'd almost imagine that they want Democrats to lose elections.

There's a Munchausen-by-proxy quality to the centrist think tanks' incessant attacks on Democrats. The think tanks harm the health of the party, then proclaim that they're the cure for the party's ailments.

We need to call them on this. We can disagree with their advice, but we also need to point out that they're harming the image of the party they claim they want to save. And they seem to be doing it repeatedly and deliberately.