What Went Down On Night 3 Of The DNC

Immigration is traditionally a Republican-owned issue (voters trust Republicans to handle the issue more), but the 2018 election showed that Democrats could successfully highlight the issue by focusing on child separation. But so far in 2020, immigration has not been among the top 10 issues mentioned in Democratic House or Senate ads. It is now back to being mentioned more by Republicans.

Now the policy focus shifts to immigration. This is yet another issue that was more salient pre-coronavirus, but one that Democrats could win on. More Americans today say that immigrants strengthen society, a complete reversal of public sentiment in the 1990s.

Not to be the contrarian — OK, TO BE THE CONTRARIAN! — but COVID-19 has made me more marginally more optimistic about how the world might respond to climate change. Amid COVID-19, people have been willing to accept some pretty radical changes to their lifestyles for what’s now going on six months. And many governments (although not really the U.S. federal government) have given the benefit of the doubt to expert guidance. But my priors were quite pessimistic on how people would respond to COVID-19, so the somewhat-patchwork response might look less bad to me by comparison.