Can Americans still have a sensible and friendly political discussion across the partisan divide? The answer is yes, and we prove it every week. Julie Roginsky, a Democrat, and Mike DuHaime, a Republican, are consultants who have worked on opposite teams for their entire careers yet have remained friends. Here, they discuss the week’s events with editorial page editor Tom Moran.
Q. Donald Trump will take his oath of office two weeks from Tuesday. He promises to begin with a mass deportation of undocumented immigrants on Day 1. How do you expect that to unfold?
Mike: I expect the Trump Administration will start by deporting criminals from prisons who are also undocumented immigrants. There will be little controversy deporting someone convicted of rape or assault or murder. Most taxpayers will agree we should deport them rather than pay to house and feed them for years. I don’t expect the administration will be going at otherwise law-abiding construction, agricultural or household workers first.
Julie: On both humanitarian and economic grounds, I pray that Mike is right. But that’s not what Donald Trump promised his base. He promised mass deportations, which will not only create mass suffering, chaos and unrest, but will also lead to absolute economic devastation. Think the price of groceries is too high now? Just wait until we have a cataclysmic labor shortage once the people who pick our crops, process our meat and staff our dairy farms are rounded up and deported. This is what Trump meant when he said “mass deportations,” and history has taught us to take politicians at their word.
Q. Meanwhile, a venomous fight broke out within the MAGA movement last week over immigration, with Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy saying we should welcome more high-skill immigrants, while immigration hard-liners like Steve Bannon and Laura Loomer called that a betrayal of MAGA’s core promise. What’s your takeaway on that dustup, and where Trump landed on it?
Mike: Trump voiced his opinion in favor of H-1B visas, on the side of Musk. The country should welcome high-skilled immigrants, but companies should only be hiring them here if there are not enough Americans to fill these high-skilled jobs graduating from US universities. We should not be granting visas to immigrants who will simply do the job for less, helping the company but displacing an American worker.
Julie: Sorry – did anyone think that as between his nativist base and billionaires, he would ever side with anyone but billionaires? I am going to sit back and watch this food fight unfold.
Q. If Democrats want to get back on their feet, James Carville is telling them to focus on the economy, stupid. Start by opposing tax cuts for the rich, then push for a $15 minimum wage. “Denouncing other Americans or their leader as miscreants is not going to win elections; focusing on their economic pain will, as will contesting the Republican economic agenda,” he wrote in the New York Times. Is he right?
Mike: Carville is right to focus on the economy, but the mantra of Democrats simply opposing tax cuts and supporting higher minimum wages feels like a playbook from a decade ago. Smart Democrats will stop allowing themselves to be pushed too far to the left on economic issues by reflexively opposing every tax cut. Everyone feels like they pay too much in taxes, and the perpetual class warfare of rich vs. poor that Democrats have played for decades is obviously failing.
Julie: It’s not rocket science: People are stretched and at the end of their rope. 28% of our fellow American adults were forced to forgo medical care because they could not afford it. Across 100 of the nation’s largest metro areas, parents are often forced to pay almost one-fifth of their family’s annual income for childcare for one child, which exceeds the cost of rent. The median weekly earnings for women in the United States is $1,021. Try paying for childcare, afterschool activities, housing and food on a thousand bucks a week. Try saving up to pay for your elderly parents’ care or, eventually, your own. Try paying for an out-of-pocket medical expense.
Julie: All I am asking (and this is not a lot) is for someone in the Democratic Party to look people in the eye and admit that life in the United States today is completely out of whack. There is nothing unpatriotic about saying this. It is just the truth. Unless you ride around in an armor-plated limousine all day long, cordoned off from the reality of your fellow citizens, your current state of mind probably ranges from uneasiness to outright anger. The first Democrat to stow the robotic talking points and make voters genuinely feel that he or she truly understands their struggle just to survive in this whacked-out world is the person who will win the next election.
Q. And speaking of minimum wage, 1 in 5 jobs in America pay less than $15 an hour. New Jersey’s minimum just went up with inflation to $15.49. That compares to $16 in New York, and $7.25 in Pennsylvania. Does that patchwork make one bit of sense?
Mike: We live in a federalist system, yet somehow we all feel states should be allowed to make their own decisions when we agree with them, but we want the federal government to override them when we disagree. In reality, in Pennsylvania very few people make less than $15 an hour, but it will be up to Pennsylvania to change their minimum wage because it is not mentioned in the Constitution, so therefore up to the states.
Julie: We tip baristas, the takeout guy, and everyone else who performs a service for us. We do this because these people work for employers who put profits over paying their workers a decent wage. No one ever bothers to ask why people in the service industry should rely on the kindness of strangers and not on their employers to eke out a living.
Q. What are your thoughts on Jimmy Carter’s passing this week? A failed president, but our greatest ex-president?
Mike: Jimmy Carter was a great man, even if he was not a great president. He set a high standard as a humanitarian and advocate for peace and the poor. However, there were times he tried to undercut current presidents by contacting foreign leaders with messages inconsistent with US foreign policy at the time, which set a poor example that was thankfully ignored by subsequent ex-presidents. But Jimmy Carter should be remembered for his humility, his patriotism, his unwavering desire for peace, his loyalty to his family, his hometown and home state, and his dedication to the country from his time at the US Naval Academy to governor to president to the day he died.
Julie: I recommend that people re-read Carter’s “malaise” speech. It is so breathtakingly honest and self-reflective that no other politician would ever have the courage to say something like it. He is a failed president because he stowed the jingoism and replaced it with tough medicine. His economic policies, like Biden’s, benefitted his successor more than they did him. But if you want to know why Reagan had the economic success that he did, you only need to look at Carter’s nomination of Paul Voelker to lead the Federal Reserve.
Q. Let’s talk about political resolutions for 2025. How can each of us help this nation navigate its bitter political divisions? Or is it a time to fight and win, rather than reconcile?
Mike: We should fight hard on policies but remember our political opponents are not our enemies. We have much more in common with our political opponents than we all give each other credit for. If you read this column, it is because you care about your town, New Jersey and America. Someone diametrically opposed to you politically also wants to make the town, state and country better. They just disagree on how to get there. Try not to question the motives of everyone who disagrees with you politically. They are not automatically communists or fascists just because you think they are wrong on policy. Maybe they love America too, and think their policies will help more than yours. That doesn’t make them evil, maybe just wrong sometimes. Remember every person you detest politically may also be a mom or dad, brother or sister, son or daughter, maybe a teacher or coach or church volunteer. Be nice. It works out better for you in the long run when you’re nice anyway.
Julie: I wrote a Substack column on this very topic earlier this week. Let me summarize it here: If Democrats want to govern in the majority, they will play to win while in the minority. Democrats, even in the minority, constantly want to prove that they know how to govern. All Republicans want to prove is that they know how to win. They’ve been good at it, generally. That’s how they got control of the Supreme Court, killed a bipartisan immigration bill that would have actually addressed the border crisis they constantly scream about, and kept Donald Trump viable as a presidential candidate after January 6th. If the American people want good government, they will have to either hope that MAGA can deliver it or vote for Democrats to do it in 2026. This means that Democrats should not deliver one vote to help Trump succeed.
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A note to readers: Mike and Julie are deeply engaged in politics and commercial advocacy in New Jersey, so both have connections to many players discussed in this column. DuHaime, the founder of MAD Global, has worked for Chris Christie, Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, and President George W. Bush. Roginsky, a principal of Comprehensive Communications Group, has served as senior advisor to campaigns of Cory Booker, Frank Lautenberg, and Phil Murphy. We will disclose specific connections only when readers might otherwise be misled.
