Civil war chatter rises when Democrats fear losing power for good

Barack Obama used the same U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement tactics as Donald Trump. During his eight years in the White House, his administration deported more illegal aliens than Trump has.

Yet the Obama years did not feature mass protests over deportations. No governors or mayors compared ICE to the Gestapo, a comparison so obscene it should end careers. No district attorneys vowed to “hunt down” ICE agents for doing their jobs. No late-night comedians insisted that ICE agents ranked “worse than Nazis.”

Democrats once drove the country into a civil war to protect slavery. Today they court conflict to protect power.

That backlash became routine only after Trump. Two factors explain why.

First, the left hates Trump to the core. Not as a political rival, but as a personal and moral affront. This visceral, uncontrolled hatred has swallowed identities and replaced judgment. It fuels social media tantrums, office politics, family feuds, and the constant need to punish dissent. Among allies, people congratulate each other for hating the right man. For everyone else, they virtue-signal.

This hatred will not fade with time. It will persist after Trump leaves office, and it may even outlive him. Ronald Reagan hate still lingers decades after his death. Trump hate runs hotter, deeper, and more irrational. It will not burn out on schedule.

Second, the immigration fight has turned strategic.

During the Obama years, the left had not yet internalized two tactics that now help it hold power.

Once Democrats win office, many push policy as far left as state and federal constitutions allow: higher taxes, soft-on-crime governance, heavier regulation, and soaring costs that punish families. That agenda drives productive citizens out of blue cities and blue states and into red states. Conservatives hold few truly red cities now; the activist class has captured many local institutions.

Red states gain taxpayers and workers. Blue states lose them.

Democrat leaders have chosen to replace the citizens who leave, but not with similarly productive citizens. They replace them with illegal aliens.

That strategy helps explain Joe Biden’s first-day border reversals and the torrent of executive actions that followed. The signal was plain: Enforcement would relax, entry would rise, and the federal government would look away. Millions came, many without legal status. Many settled in blue jurisdictions that offer sanctuary policies and advertise benefits.

Politicians sell those benefits as “free”: child care, health care, schooling, housing programs. Taxpayers pay the bills. Debt fills the rest.

California offers the clearest example. The state has lost large numbers of residents to Texas and Florida. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) does not treat the exodus as a crisis. He treats it as ideological sorting. If taxpayers leave, he can replace the head count with people who will not challenge his machine at the ballot box.

Illegal aliens are not allowed to vote. They still count. Biden made sure of that.

The census counts residents, and those numbers drive seats in the United States House of Representatives and votes in the Electoral College. Add population, gain power. Lose population, lose power. Democrats understand the arithmetic, which is why they fight enforcement as fiercely as they fight elections.

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Photo by Geoff Stellfox/Getty Images

Then comes the long game. Children born here can vote. Democrats assume those children will vote Democrat for life. They are building a future electorate while padding current representation.

Trump’s deportation strategy threatens that structure. Democrats have already watched citizens flee Illinois, New York, California, and other strongholds. If deportations also shrink the illegal-alien population those states have absorbed, Democrats lose House seats, Electoral College strength, and national leverage.

So they raise the temperature. They smear ICE as “secret police” and dare Trump to enforce the law anyway. They bait confrontation because chaos can create a veto: If streets burn long enough, Washington may flinch.

If Trump refuses to flinch, they reach for the next weapon: the camera. A clash becomes a “crackdown.” An arrest becomes “political persecution.” A dead protester becomes a martyr, and the headlines write themselves. The moral damage does not scare them; it serves them.

Democrats once drove the country into a civil war to protect slavery. Today they court conflict to protect power. They do not need tanks to do it. They need prosecutors, mayors, and media partners willing to treat law enforcement as evil and disorder as virtue.