A new poll says 84% of New Yorkers think the state’s migrant mess is a serious problem.
The remaining 16% are zombied-out addicts living in parks and subway tunnels.
Ha. Just kidding about the zombie part.
But, seriously, if you live in New York and don’t think the state’s ever-swelling army of border-hoppers is a serious problem, then you really — really — haven’t been paying attention.
So no surprise then that a poll Tuesday from the Siena College Research Institute finds not only that New Yorkers are uber-stressed over immigration — but that President Biden has but a single-digit lead over Donald Trump in a hypothetical general-election match-up next year.
Clearly, federal fecklessness has consequences.
Biden is up only nine points – 46% to 37% – in a head-to-head in 2024, an extraordinarily small number in cobalt-blue New York.
Or maybe, just maybe, New York isn’t quite so blue any longer — having been mugged by a crime-and-chaos tolerant Democratic political establishment.
Recall that Republican Lee Zeldin came within 7 points of beating Kathy Hochul in last year’s gubernatorial race — the closest the GOP has come in a very long time.
It’s easy to make too much of such polls, especially those taken a year in advance of the race in question — and at a time of great political and social turmoil.
After all, Biden may not even be the Democratic nominee next year — and who knows where Trump will be by then, right?
But this much seems clear: the effective collapse of America’s southern border comes with downstream political ramifications.
How can one tell if the Siena poll truly reflects public disquiet on immigration? That’s easy — both Hochul and Mayor Adams are very much acting like it does.
They’re cowards about it, for sure, complaining about costs and then timidly stating the obvious — the problem is the open border — but scurrying back under cover, presumably after blowback from both the White House and New York’s increasingly hard-left Democratic establishment.
Regular New Yorkers have no reason to fear ether, of course.
They get it — it’s hard not to when 100,000-plus penniless supplicants crowd into your state in just months — and they overwhelmingly tell Siena they want it stopped.
It’s sort of like last year, when crime and related social disorder dominated the debate, when an obdurately ideological political establishment blew off those concerns — and when a Republican came uncommonly close to beating an incumbent Democratic governor.
Now throw in the Biden border collapse — plus the shameful Islamist-terror fellow-traveling by so many Democrats since Oct. 7 — and it should surprise no one that New York is trending purple.
But purple is one thing; a serious Trump threat to the Democratic presidential ticket in New York next year would be something quite different.
Still, earthquakes often follow foreshocks. Kathy Hochul’s close call could be one such; Tuesday’s Siena poll, another.
So what’s a proud Democrat to do?
Maybe tell Joe Biden that 84% of New Yorkers say his immigration policies are sinking their state, and that it’s time he does something about that.
The man’s future, such as it is, could depend on it. Also, New York’s.
Email: bob@bobmcmanus.nyc
Source link: https://nypost.com/2023/10/24/opinion/latest-migrant-poll-should-scare-the-hell-out-of-democrats/