Instead, the Democrats can generalize by throwing out a lot of nice sounding values like border security, path-to-citizenship, racial equality, national health, ethnic values, enforce the law, and, of course, save-the-children.
With those values out in front they can then critique the Republicans for “doing nothing”, “creating a border mess” and any aspect of any fractious plan they cobble together.
While we can damn them for a failure to provide an alternative, they can say, “An alternative to what?”
Enforcing the law in the wake of 9/11 would have been so simple a remedy.
Our presidential candidates have changed that almost entirely. Listen to them. The Republican party is now the party of secure borders. In fact, our NWO Republicans did the party a favor by pushing this issue early. That made them realize they do not even have a party if they don't get on board the secure borders train. So they did.
The R's are going to lose a lot of big money contributors over this--the Chamber of Commerce R's will not tolerate a slowdown in the flow of illegals and will start contributing to D's. In fact, I believe that shift is going on right now and is showing up in the relatively better performance by the D's in fund raising.
The only good thing about this shift is that the money from former Chamber of Commerce R's will moderate the dems considerably on free-market issues.
In the long run, this shift is just reflecting a long-term shift in who each party represents. The dems have been the party of the wealthy and the underclass for a while. The R's of the middle class. Immigration will move that shift along faster.