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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 17, 2026

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First off I would like to point out that Carlos Odio is not some impartial analyst, he's a former Obama staffer and DNC Superdelegate who founded an NGO "dedicated to immigrant and Latinx outreach".

I'm sure he is left personally and socially, but from what I've heard of him on the old fivethirtyeight podcast and now the gdpolitics podcast, he always seemed to have the thumb on the scale with regards to latino voters and report what he sees without embellishment. I distinctively remember him raising the early "alarm bells" about Latino voters moving towards Trump. I know everyone has an agenda, but I think a commitment to the truth and facts on the ground means everyone will at least be directionally moving in the "right" direction.

I would also ask how confident should we be in anything coming out of Cambridge University these days when viewed in the context of recent events?

Yes we still should. Different people can raise different level of salt though.

Given the above, just how sure are we that Trump and the right are "failing"? As I was telling @cjet79 down-thread, US Mexico border crossings have hit a 50 year low.

As I said, I do think border patrol is an anti-inflow measure. Gattsuru has warned me though so maybe it's not as much an anti-outflow measure as I thought it is. When I talk about failing, I wasn't talking about meeting the policy objective, but of how the voters view your policies. As I already mentioned, voters rank border patrol very high for Trump, it's the other parts of the immigration agenda that is considered unsavory, and therefore, a failure.

Personally I find the "anti-flow" "pro-stock" position logically untenable, as what it boils down to in practice is "I don't believe in open borders, I just don't think that immigration laws should ever be enforced".

I think that's a pretty extreme view of what the position could be. Closed borders is part of immigration law, so already some immigration law has to be enforced. But anyway, I wasn't talking about not enforcing immigration laws, what I'm talking about is choosing immigration laws that would meet the objectives (keep immigration low/manageable to get the best stock, high inflow is fine if it's also matched by high outflow) AND is tolerable and acceptable to most voters (therefore ensuring a lasting regime that continues to be successful no matter who is in charge).