Okay, Bill Ackman, I'll Bite: Here Are the Best Arguments Against that Weird Propaganda Video that You and Elon Musk Like

Dissecting a bad faith video in good faith

Recently, a Twitter account called “Western Lensman” posted a video called “The Democrat Open Borders Plan to Entrench Single Party Rule, Explained in Under Two Minutes.” It currently has about half a million views. Elon Musk retweeted the video and added “This is happening!” Bill Ackman, the financier who recently gained attention by leading the push to oust Harvard President Claudine Gay, said “I find this credible. What are the best arguments one can make against the case the video makes?”

Here’s the video:

So, okay, sure: Here are the counter-arguments, as I see them. I probably shouldn’t do this, this feels like a waste of time, but since my plan for today was to write about the Lindsay Lohan direct-to-Netflix St. Patrick’s Day movie Irish Wish, maybe my time can afford to be wasted.

And I’m going to mostly skip the jokes today, because I’m being analytical and I don’t want to muddy the waters with snark.

1. The video ignores Occam’s razor by repeatedly assuming conspiratorial motives when simpler explanations are available.

I used to have a joke about conspiracy theories in my standup — I did this bit back when I worked for the federal government. It goes: “Conspiracy theorists give the government way too much credit. They’re always talking about nanobots and Area 51…guys, we can’t get the hang of two-sided printing in my office. Mind control can wait — we need to figure out the difference between ‘reply’ and ‘reply all’ first.”

The video posits a grad scheme which, frankly, would be pretty impressive if Democrats pulled it off. They won’t pull it off because the building blocks are nonsensical — I’ll get to that — but let’s note how odd it is that the right is ascribing motives to actions to which they have already ascribed motives. Republicans often accuse Democrats of supporting social spending because they’re quasi-socialist, and of being soft on illegal immigration because they think borders are racist, and I happen to be a Democrat who has written about how there is some truth to those criticisms! But this video says “Nope, scratch all that — it’s actually all part of a master plan to achieve single party government.”

2. The video ignores many instances in which Democrats have supported policies to reduce illegal immigration.

It’s broadly true that Democrats are softer on illegal immigration than Republicans, but there are many examples of Democrats supporting measures to reduce illegal immigration. Just last month, Biden and Congressional Democrats backed a bill that would have strengthened border enforcement, to the consternation of the far left. Republicans suddenly turned against a bill they had co-authored after Trump denounced it. This broadly replicated the dynamic of Obama’s second term, in which he instituted tough anti-illegal immigration measures that earned the enmity of the far left (they used to call Obama the “Deporter In Chief”). But, instead of working with Obama to craft a deal to bring some order to our immigration system, Republicans balked.

It is actually pretty easy to find Democrats opposed to illegal immigration. 40 seconds in, the video talks about the effort to turn big cities into “population magnets” and shows New York Mayor Eric Adams and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson. These are strange choices, because, far from wanting their cities to be “population magnets”, Adams and Johnson were two of the loudest Democratic voices calling for stronger border measures last fall. Important Democrats like Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries call the border a “serious problem” and support a “strong” and “secure” border, and I’ll reiterate that they support a border enforcement bill at this very moment. The reality is that the left is split on immigration; there’s a “let everyone in” movement and a “no, that’s insane” movement. The video ignores the second faction — which appears to include the president and a majority of the Democratic congressional caucus — because it’s inconvenient to the “master plan” narrative.

3. It’s Texas governor Greg Abbott — not Democrats — who engineered the “free flights, buses, hotels, meals, and phones” situation.

Greg Abbott decided to bring the border issue to Democrat-run cities by busing and flying migrants to cities like DC and New York. So, Abbott is providing the transportation, not Democrats. Once the migrants arrived, the cities decided to feed and house them instead of letting them starve to death in the streets. I would call this “basic human decency”, but the video sees no other possible motive than a nefarious scheme.

4. A few free meals and a cot seem unlikely to “…[ensure] their loyalty to the political party that imported them.”

Can undying political loyalty be bought with a box lunch and a shelter bed? If it can, then why aren’t Republicans providing the box lunch and shelter bed? They could hijack this scheme for peanuts!

This part of the master plan also only works if Greg Abbott plays along. If Abbott hadn’t shipped the migrants to DC and New York, then Democrats in those cities wouldn’t have a chance to buy everlasting loyalty with a cheese sandwich and a bag of Doritos.

5. Democrats do not want to “Keep [illegal immigrants] in the country at all costs, even when they commit violent crime like murder and rape.” And even if they did, they would gain no electoral advantage from doing so.

This is just bonkers; if you think that Democrats want to keep rapists and murderers in the country, then you have a hopelessly cartoonish view of Democrats.

But let’s imagine that this belief — which would be horrifically unpopular, if true — is one that Democrats actually hold. Would this strategy make sense as part of an effort to supply Democratic votes? Here are the numbers:

0.047% of Americans are in jail for murder, and 0.049% are in jail for rape or sexual assault. To give this theory every possible benefit of the doubt, let’s assume that illegal immigrants commit these crimes at double the rate of the US population. So, that would work out to 0.19% of the illegal immigrant population committing either crime. There are about 11 million people in the country illegally (that number has stayed pretty steady for about 20 years). 0.19% of 11 million is 21,105 people, equal to the population of Geneva, Illinois. 154.6 million people voted in 2020; 12,105 is 0.014% of that number. Also, Democrats would only gain that 0.014% if every single illegal rapist and murder voted Democrat, even though illegal immigrants can’t vote, and almost nobody in jail can vote. And, of course, if Democrats came out in favor of keeping illegal immigrants who commit rape and murder in the country, that would cost them a lot more than 21,105 votes.

The first bar that any conspiracy theory should have to clear is that it should make logical sense if all assumptions are true. This theory does not clear that bar.

6. The part that says Democrats want to “Count non-citizens in the census that will determine congressional apportionment in the House of Representatives” makes no logical sense.

The census counts any foreign-born person — illegal or illegal — who participates in the census. This has been true since 1850 — this is not a Democratic plot, this is how we’ve been doing things for 174 years. Our current Republican-led House and countless other Republican-led Houses have existed under this system.

Plus, if anyone cares, there’s a practical reason for doing things this way: Some things are apportioned based on population, and the government needs to know how many people are in a place, not just how many citizens.

There was an effort to make non-citizens not count towards reapportionment after the 2020 census. Had the effort been successful (it wasn’t), it would have changed things this way: Texas, California, and Florida would have had one more seat in the House, and Alabama, Minnesota, and Ohio would have had one fewer. I find this interesting, because the change would almost certainly have resulted in the exact same partisan split in the House that we have now! Because Texas (red), California (blue), and Florida (reddish-purple) would gain seats, while Alabama (red), Minnesota (blue), and Ohio (reddish-purple) would lose them. It’s a push. Once again: The theory makes no sense even if all the assumptions are granted.

7. The part that says a change to the census “would equal 13 extra congressional districts” is simply wrong.

This is a flat-out misunderstanding of how congressional apportionment works. The 1929 Permanent Apportionment Act capped the number of House seats at 435 — the census cannot “add” seats. There will be 435 seats in the next Congress (and the one after that, and the one after that…). The census could change how seats are apportioned, but see point #6, above: That reapportionment would not confer any clear advantage to Democrats.

I also have no fucking idea where the “13” in this statistic comes from. I think they just took the percentage of the population that’s here illegally and calculated “that many extra people equals this many extra House seats.” But that demonstrates a total misunderstanding of how both the census and congressional apportionment work.

8. Even if the Democrats pulled off this plan based on an incorrect understandings of how things work, it would not confer “a tremendous amount of electoral power.”

This is subjective, but I would argue that 13 seats in a 435-seat body that is one half of one-third of the government in a highly federalized system is not “a tremendous amount of electoral power”. Running the math on that: 13/435 = 0.03 * 0.5 (because of the Senate) * 0.333 (because of the executive and judicial branches) = 0.5%. So, if this nonsensical plan somehow worked perfectly, Democrats would gain power equal to one 200th of the federal government (and there are still states).

And, let me reiterate: That “13 seats” number is just completely wrong.

9. A “a massive, heavily funded lawfare campaign to change state voting laws that legalize mass mail in ballots…” would probably not confer any advantage to Democrats and might confer an advantage to Republicans.

Republicans and Democrats have been sparring over voting rules for two decades. While it’s true that there is a campaign (which I suppose could be called a “massive, heavily-funded” campaign) to make it easier to vote, there is a symmetrical campaign to make it harder to vote. Referencing one campaign without the other makes it sound like a conniving subterfuge instead of an extremely public fight that everyone has known about for decades.

Mail-in ballots make it easier to vote. For years, the conventional wisdom was that high turnout benefits Democrats, hence the belief that expanding voting access is good for Democrats. But we have strong evidence that the dynamic has recently changed — it now looks like Democrats do better when turnout is low! Therefore, making it easier to vote through mail-in ballots would quite possibly benefit Republicans.

10. A supposed plot to “…legalize mass mail in ballots, no signature verification and no proof of citizenship requirements” has essentially nothing to do with illegal immigration.

Signature verification and proof-of-citizenship requirements have almost nothing to do with illegal immigration because illegal immigrants can’t register to vote. You can’t mail in a ballot that says “Hey, Joe Illegal here — this is my vote,” because Joe Illegal has to register, and he can’t register. The only way for an illegal immigrant to vote is to mail in a ballot in the name of a registered voter. Putting aside the fact that that’s a high-risk, low-reward crime that all evidence suggests is exceedingly rare: What does that have to do with illegal immigration? Any of us could mail in a fake ballot! Why import a bunch of immigrants to fill out fake ballots when you could just fill them out yourself? And once you’re forging a ballot — that is, once you’re committing the dumbest felony imaginable — why not go ahead and also forge a signature and a photocopied driver’s license, if that’s required? The “illegals will mail in ballots” theory is a non-sequitur that fails to understand how voting works.

11. The idea that Democrats could “lock in the permanent voting majority with campaign promises of lavish benefits and permanent privileges” is not supported by evidence.

If social spending = permanent voting majority, then why don’t Democrats already have such a majority? On the balance, social spending accrues to lower-income people, but Democrats have done terribly with white working class voters for a long time, and now non-white working class voters are leaving the party in droves. Spending obviously doesn’t “lock in” anything — far from it. Democrats currently hold a 22-point advantage among white voters with postgraduate degrees and a 23-point disadvantage among white voters with no college, which proves that people don’t vote the way a simple tax/spending benefit model would suggest.

12. The “enshrining generational fealty to the Democratic party” line demonstrates that the video is hilariously out of touch with reality.

This might be the funniest line in the whole ridiculous video, because it theorizes the exact opposite of what is happening right now! Here is the graph that is causing endless ulcers in Democratic political circles at the moment:

That graph is from John Burn-Murdoch of the Financial Times. As you can see, it shows that nonwhite voters have anything but “generational fealty” to the Democratic Party. And the trend is particularly pronounced among latinos, who are now split almost 50/50 between Democrats and Republicans! It truly is funny that a conservative propaganda video is warning of a permanent, immigrant-driven Democratic majority at the exact moment that the Democratic establishment is shitting its pants over the fact that latinos don’t really vote Democrat anymore.

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So, let’s put this together. The theory posits that Democrats have a master plan comprised of actions that can easily be ascribed to other motivations — not all of them noble — but that are better understood as part of a long-con. The most important part of the con is unfettered immigration, even though Democrats sometimes support anti-illegal-immigration measures, including right now. Another part of the con is to turn a blind eye to rape and murder, even though doing so would almost certainly cost Democrats votes. Yet another part of the plan is to essentially buy people off, even though evidence suggests that doesn’t work. Democrats would empower their loyal army of illegal voters using a plan that could be executed with no illegal voters whatsoever and which would quite possibly benefit Republicans. The checkmate move consists of a power grab in the House that relies on: 1) A misunderstanding of how the census works, and 2) A misunderstanding of how House apportionment works. And all of this is happening in an environment in which latino and other nonwhite voters are rapidly moving away from the Democratic Party.

So, Bill, those are the best arguments, as I see them. If you find these points persuasive, please Venmo me one million dollars.

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