You know Democrats are in trouble when Gov. Katie Hobbs sounds like a border hawk

When Arizona’s Democratic governor, Katie Hobbs, starts to look and sound like a GOP border hawk, you know something is afoot.

When independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, who years ago used to march for migrant rights, centers her campaign on securing the border, you know our world has changed.

When the Democratic incumbent president finds himself trailing the latest polls to a twice-impeached, four-time indicted former president, it’s time to start asking what’s up?

Abortion alone won't save Democrats

The answer may be found in the Real Clear Politics polling average.

Joe Biden is melting on the issue of immigration, as Americans disapprove of his handling of the border by nearly 30 points.

And it’s not just Republicans.

Some 75% of New York Democrats told a recent Siena College Poll that the recent influx of migrants into New York State is a serious issue. For the Democratic Party, that is perilously close to the 85% of Republicans in New York state who said the same.

It means the abortion debate, in which the left holds the strongest cards, is not going to save the Democratic Party.

Abortion has split the Republican Party between its purists, who want to abolish abortion, and its pragmatists, who want to regulate its legal practice.

The issue has confounded the party as it has lost bellwether elections to Democrats in Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky and Kansas.

Immigration is Biden's kryptonite

But just when it seemed abortion had become Republicans’ kryptonite, another issue of equal urgency has emerged as its counterweight by confounding Democrats:

Immigration.

It’s not just that today’s border is as permeable as it has ever been. It’s that all across the Western world, from London to Paris to Berlin to Ottawa to Washington, governments are reeling under the pressure of mass migration from the global South.

In America we are waking up to the possibility that the large numbers we see crossing the U.S.-Mexico border are not just out of control, but possibly uncontrollable.

The Biden White House has tried to stem the flow, even mimicking some of Donald Trump’s old policies, but to no avail.

In September, a record number of parents traveling with children — 103,000, reports the Washington Post — illegally crossed our southern border. Border Patrol is recording some of its highest arrests levels at 9,000 per day.

Mexican cartels have gained a foothold

If we can’t control the flow of migrants across the border, can anyone?

Yes. Apparently, the Mexican cartels can.

That nation’s drug lords have created a rogue travel agency around the U.S.-Mexico border, The New York Times reports.

“Migrant smuggling on the U.S. southern border has evolved over the past 10 years from a scattered network of freelance ‘coyotes’ into a multi-billion-dollar international business controlled by organized crime, including some of Mexico’s most violent drug cartels.”

Texas is considering its own SB 1070? Big mistake

The cartels are also expanding the nature of America’s border problem.

With their greater focus on the border, the cartels have gained a foothold in the United States, creating illegal marijuana grows in northern California and southern Oregon. There in the remote forests they exploit and mistreat workers, generally undocumented migrants, who work off the fees the cartels charge them to be smuggled into the United States.

Cartel kidnappings and extortion that are common to Mexican border cities, are now occurring in greater frequency in the United States, reports The Times.

Hobbs and Sinema forsee the problem

As the border grows more unmanageable for U.S. officials, “Washington’s center of gravity on immigration has shifted to the right,” shouts an Associated Press headline.

A reflection of this was Arizona Gov. Hobbs, who late last week walked the border in an earth-tone green jacket and said, “We need the federal government to step up, do its job, and bring security and order to our border.”

Kyrsten Sinema, who was early to recognize the emerging immigration problem and to look for bipartisan solutions, was also stepping up her border rhetoric last week.

“Arizona is in crisis,” she tweeted. “I’m calling on my colleagues to drop the partisan rhetoric and focus on real results that will actually address the security and humanitarian disaster at our southern border.”

As the Arizona Supreme Court takes up the question of Arizona abortion law that could lead to reinstatement of a near total ban on abortion from Arizona’s territorial days, Republicans are awakening to the liability abortion could become in the 2024 elections.

Democrats should not get too gleeful. They have their own albatross to manage.

Immigration looms on their horizon.

Phil Boas is an editorial columnist for The Arizona Republic. Email him at phil.boas@arizonarepublic.com.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Border is an issue for Democrats like abortion is for Republicans