Wedges, Political Style – March 4, 2026

This arguably might be the most common and most bipartisan political attitude known to the nation, the political strategy of deploying the equivalent of a “damned if you do, damned if you do not” scenario.

There are two flavors of political wedges, slight differences but you could say they are still inherently related. Motivation and impact.

For the purposes of this conversation, let us define political wedge as a specific social, cultural, economic, or other topic (political issue) used by one political party to force a decision by the other party by the perception of political consequence. Sister to this is the idea, thus very related, is using that tactic of political entrapment to split an opposing side’s coalition likely response to that topic.

Some might approach this topic as the politics of splitting hairs on an issue, or issues, to the point of falling into fallacies like false dilemma or false equivalency to drive home whatever point is being made. And while there is some truth to that, the bigger concern is not just Republicans and Democrats both playing this game all too well but also mainstream media taking their cues from them. Not just how Republicans and Democrats talk about each other on a subject, but also how mainstream media asks very similar entrapment style questions.

An example for us to consider, cause it is in the news… again.

Take the recent discussion on funding the Department of Homeland Security, we have had a conversation before on this. In that we also talked about the “False Dilemmas, Drama Queen Statements, other Fallacies” going on with this subject. We can expand upon that a bit with recent discussions on the hill over this.

Speaker Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA-4th just today released a statement and had a press conference saying the same thing, “It is inexcusable that Democrats continue to shut down the American government over and over, hurting American citizens and jeopardizing the security of our homeland, on purpose, to protect illegal aliens.” He then went further to say “Now, they have shut down the government again for the expressed purpose of making sure known criminal illegal aliens including child molesters and murderers can continue living in American neighborhoods. These are truly the worst of the worst.” And finally down in the statement was, “Democrats withholding funding for the department in the midst of rapidly mounting crises is the definition of irresponsibility.”

The whole thing is here

Now, this is typical on the hill.

Democrats are upset with the methods DHS and ICE is deploying across the nation and are wanting reforms, Republicans are upset that they do not have the political support to get DHS overall as an agency as they see fit. Technically DHS for ICE has some funding available from the One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) as supplemental to how funding usually works. However, we are still in a partial shutdown and a few agencies will eventually have funding problems. Transportation Safety Administration (TSA,) Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA,) the Coast Guard, etc.

Politically, the battlelines are established. Democrats, mostly, are willing to die on the hill of public sentiment on how DHS and ICE under Secretary Kristi Noem are going about their task of rounding people up. Republicans, mostly, are willing to die on the hill of the false dilemma that is national security or prioritizing illegal immigrants over everyone else.

Somehow in all of this was a bipartisan effort unfortunately taken on during a national election campaign season for President. The Emergency National Security Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2024 that would have taken a slightly different approach to immigration crackdown than what we see today. All things considered, to prevent a “win” for Biden during an election season suddenly onboard Republicans flipped to a no on this at the request of then candidate Trump and ultimately the effort was killed.

You could say that the politics of bipartisan ship was purposefully concluded with no real Congressional action, so that the argument could be made for Republicans to go about immigration handling in the manner we see today. Said another way, and rather bluntly, this was intentional.

Plenty of fault to go around

There is a whole lot of room to pick on Democrats on this issue as well, might even be willing to argue the majority of the blame for immigration ending up in the condition we see today is because of Democratic political issue passivism.

It is worth discussing that during the first 3 ‘ish years of the Biden Administration there was near record high immigrant encounters at the southern border, at the time there was a political perception of Harris handling the issue for Biden but the whole thing came off as “chaos” from a loss of control. No matter the source you go with, and acknowledging there is wide variation in the numbers, but all of them agree that between 2021 and 2023 immigrant encounters from the border with Mexico were well above a million approaching 2 million each year. The overall trend from 2000 to 2020, of course a spike here and there, was trending downward from about a million per year to less than a half-million per year.

Does not mean Republicans were right on Democrats “wanting open borders” but there is merit to the criticism of how this was handled. This was evidenced by deportations by year (both at border caught and internal captured) were also down even though there was some trailing effect from the Covid lockdown years and the Immigration Court backlogs skyrocketing from 2014 to 2024. As in, by over 6x.

When Harris was tasked with “getting to the bottom of the issue,” clearly severe mistakes were made.

An argument could be made that the Biden Administration was caught off guard in dealing with the border, then once it was out of control they became too inept or simply decided not to address the matter until way too late. No matter what the actual issue was, political perceptions or otherwise, the political damage was done. Meaning, the argument includes the above bipartisan effort was doomed to fail anyway out of perception of how long the Biden Administration took to make it an issue. His “win” might not have ever been a win anyway.

Realized impact on 2024

Democratic loyalists will argue this point, but know by the numbers, polling and exit polling across the nation, that one of the reasons Trump won in 2024 includes this very subject.

Not just the politics of killing a bipartisan deal, but the use of these numbers created a wedge with enough Latino and Black voters, especially males, concluding there “too many immigrants illegally crossed the border.” This was astonishing politically speaking, Trump made gains with demographics that ultimately became political targets once in office with a Republican Congress in tow.

Add to this a matter of perception, the murder of Augusta University nursing student and 22-year old Laken Riley on February 22, 2024. Jogging near the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia she ended up attacked, and the cause of her death was blunt force trauma and asphyxiation. Her last moments of life were of both sheer horror and pain, and charged with this crime was José Antonio Ibarra. A 26-year-old Venezuelan man who had entered the United States illegally.

Pretty much drove home a perspective point Republicans were making, that worked well enough, ensuring that some 77% of swing voters who picked Trump over Harris (and by extension Biden) did so because Democrats were “not tough enough” in handling the border condition. Internally, the Democratic Party saw their own internal wedge on this largely between moderate / swing voter driven States against those representing more solidly Democratic base States.

The point being, a strategic failure of the bipartisan deal is one factor but the bigger one was the best use case example we have from the past year or so on political wedges altering an outcome. At one point, even 44% of Democratic voters contended that those who entered the nation during the surge should be deported.

Perception vs. Perspective

We are getting even more dangerously close to a conversation on perception vs. perspective, and how it alters voter sentiment.

For the purposes of this conversation, politics, and at the risk of oversimplification, the only practical difference between the two is perception is the what part of the issue and perspective is the why part explaining that position on the matter.

Because most will get an initial take on a matter, some combination of thought and emotion about it, the what part ends up as initial optics. That “gut feeling” one may get when learning about some story in the news and/or social media. Using our example, if there is a sharp surge of border encounters then “the border is out of control” and “Democrats want illegal immigrants” might be the conclusion one will reach.

The why part then becomes a political filter, a lens, to offer some explanation for that initial set of optics. Same example, Republicans claiming the bipartisan deal was a “sell out” allowing such a large number of immigrants to be “codified” with additional daily limits (or some other metric.) The goal of perspective is to shift public opinion towards alignment with a party’s general position on some matter. Go after those willing to not be loyal to a party by advancing perception with a perspective that might ultimately move votes. At least from vote for to vote against, as in what Republicans accomplished by framing immigration as a “national security concern.” Which it is, to an extent.

In conclusion

This conversation could be reduced to the obvious, politicians love to manipulate the general public with clever use of debate fallacies. Which is clearly true, however there is a bigger discussion on how we look at these issues from our own conclusions against the political goals of a party offering perspective.

Over the coming days the House and Senate will take up various measures, attempts, to fund DHS for the remainder of the fiscal year. Most are likely to fail as the general attitudes from Republicans is full speed ahead and the attitude from Democrats is not without changes to how Kristi Noem operates. With all the above political rhetoric battleline style negative vile arguments on what each side wants and why.

Request is to evaluate all of this, review mainstream media and a few other sources for numbers specifics, as it applies not just to the ongoing multiple-decade immigration debate fiasco but also other matters that seem to stay in the news just enough. Tends to suggest a lack of seriousness Republicans to Democrats on doing much, until someone takes things to the extreme.

Like the Trump Administration on this subject, and several others.

Does not mean we have to agree with Trump and Noem on all this, as if to fall into the trap of agree with everything we are doing or you “support illegal immigrants,” but it might mean if it was not Trump doing this then on a long enough timeline eventually someone else would have.