It didn't take long for Democrats to drop "affordability" for "abolish ICE." Don't be shocked. It usually doesn't take long to forsake what your head tells you for where your heart leads you.
Not long ago, "affordability" was all the rage among Democrats. They had chanced on the discovery that they could politically benefit from blaming Trump for a problem they caused throughout their party's time in the White House.
"Affordability" is just a buzzword—and a dodge—for past inflation. When you get high prices across the board, it comes from inflation having raised the price of everything. And you got inflation from the Biden-Harris years. In spades.
Just a month after the Biden-Harris administration took office, inflation took off. It breached the Fed's preferred 2 percent rate in March 2021 (at 2.6 percent) and never looked back, hitting 7 percent by December, peaking at 9.1 percent in June 2022, and remaining at 6.5 percent in December 2022. In December 2024, inflation was still rising at 2.9 percent. To put this in perspective: When inflation hit 2.6 percent in March 2021, it was the highest rate since August 2018 and higher than all but four months in the previous four years.
On top of all the additional money in circulation, the Biden-Harris administration pumped it out as fast as the Fed created it. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), over fiscal years 2021-2024, it ran $7.5 trillion in cumulative deficits and spent a cumulative $8.2 trillion over pre-COVID 2019 spending levels.
Even with inflation coming down (to 2.7 percent in November and December and 2.4 percent in January), because of four years of "Biden-flation," prices remain about 25 percent higher than in 2020. Go figure.
Rather than accept responsibility, Democrats shifted it. What's more, it seemed to work. They won 2025's Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial races by running as moderates—and away from their party's inflation and extremist wing.
Validated by victory, "affordability" was to be Democrats' 2026 midterm election theme. The economy is always a great political opportunity, because it affects everyone. When it absolves your own culpability, all the better.
Democrats were all set. Then Minneapolis's chaos over the Trump administration's ICE surge erupted. That local officials in Minneapolis and Minnesota refused to cooperate with federal law enforcement officials and egged on their extremist supporters for years was ignored. Democrats could not resist it.
So, Democrats pivoted from focusing on "affordability" to focusing on the "abolish ICE" desire of their extremist wing. Then they shut down the federal government (at least the part they could shut down: portions of DHS) over it. Their demands are simple: Make ICE's enforcement job harder and less safe to do.
The reason for Democrats' pivot is equally simple: They can't help themselves. Like a dog seeing a moving car—regardless of knowing they shouldn't, at the first sight of the spinning wheels of a speeding car, they are off the porch. Call it instinct.
What America is seeing in Democrats' shift from "affordability" to "abolish ICE" is the difference between running on an issue and running after one. It is the difference between thinking and feeling, between head and heart.
Democrats are a party of feeling. Despite their claims to "follow the science" they are thrilled to abandon it—as they do on the transgender issue (listen to the painful refusal/inability to answer the simple question "Can men get pregnant?") and as they did repeatedly during COVID (masking, herd immunity, six-feet apart, school lockdowns, etc.)—when their predilections get in the way.
On ICE, and more broadly on immigration, Democrats believe there should be open borders, no immigration law, and taxpayer benefits for illegal immigrants. That's why America had an open border for four years under the Biden-Harris administration.
That's what Democrats are de facto saying now when they call for abolishing ICE: take away enforcement and replace it with nothing. When you take away enforcement of the law, you get more of the activity that the law was intended to prohibit.
Democrats will do the same thing when the Supreme Court rules, as it undoubtedly will later this year, that states can enforce transgender bans in girls' and women's sports. Off the porch, they will go again. Heart over head.
"Affordability" and economic issues are moderate and middle-of-the-road issues, but that's not them. Democrats will grudgingly run on them to get elected—as Spanberger did in Virginia and Sherrill did in New Jersey—and then run away from them once in office. But the issues that they run after are the extremist ones. There is no steadying their heart at the sight of the spinning wheels.
J.T. Young is the author of the recent book, "Unprecedented Assault: How Big Government Unleashed America's Socialist Left," from RealClear Publishing. Follow him on Substack.