To the Editor:
Imagine you’re in a group of 30 people. You need to get a majority of them to agree on where you’ll go for lunch. Pretty easy, right? But wait, some friends say: “We don’t like 13 of them – so don’t negotiate with those ones. Just get the other 17 to agree.”
But of those 17, five of them won’t compromise. They only want to go to that terrible sandwich shop down the road, where everything’s too greasy and tastes like cardboard. You beg and plead, but they don’t budge. So you end up not getting lunch at all.
Seems pretty silly, right? Don’t you want to at least talk to those 13 others and see if you can find a compromise with them?
That’s how Congress should be handling the immigration crisis, but Republicans in Congress refuse to have any compromise with Democrats. Instead, they try to make it palatable to their most anti-immigrant members.
Erik Paulsen, writing in the Eden Prairie News, tried to urge Democrats to not “stand in the way of finally getting something done.” How does he expect to get Democrats’ support when he refuses to negotiate with them? After 10 years, I’ve had enough of Paulsen’s ridiculous claims of bipartisanship. This November, I’m casting my vote for Dean Phillips, a candidate whose entire career is built off making solutions and working with everyone.
Benjamin Schribman, Edina
Edina Sun-Current, July 12, 2018