Displaced Voters

You are a regulator responsible for flight safety.  Your staff has proposed a rule that will reduce deaths per million miles traveled by air.  However, it will also impose costs on travelers, inducing some travelers to choose other methods of travel.  If those other methods of travel are less safe than air travel, then you have to weigh two effects of the proposed regulation:  (1) deaths from air travel will fall (both because fewer people will travel by air, and because air travel will be safer), and (2) deaths from non-air travel will increase (because more people will travel by non-air means).  If the net effect is to increase the number of deaths, then arguably the regulation is a bad idea.

David Frum has suggested that something like this goes on in politics.  If the enforcement of immigration laws is labeled "racist" and put off-limits for mainstream politicians, then this may have the effect of reducing immigration enforcement.  But it has another effect, which is to force people who believe in immigration laws to express their views through non-mainstream channels.  The net effect on politics may not be positive, even from the perspective of immigrants.

Of course regulators may have other reasons to impose rules beyond the considerations I've mentioned, and similarly politicians have motivations beyond the welfare of immigrants, so even if the math works out to be bad for immigrants, there might be other reasons to marginalize people who believe in immigration law.  Also, whereas airline regulations probably operate pretty smoothly, there are sharp discontinuities in politics (something like punctuated equilibrium).  Extremists can be marginalized for years or decades, and then can be swept into power in a paroxysm of anger.  But maybe the paroxysm never comes, or maybe it's one of those "when the paroxysm comes we'll have bigger things to worry about" kinds of calculations.

In any case, I share Frum's worry that what we have is an unstable situation ripe for an opportunistic nationalist campaign.  Luckily (?!?) Trump seems to be too inept to mount a successful campaign (though I urge you not to be complacent).  But the choice that the Democrats are increasingly embracing seems dangerous to me, and I think it would be prudent to pay attention to the forces that are building up as a result.