This wasn’t just Clinton’s doing, of course. For the past fifty years, the Democratic Party has been the moving force behind rights movements generally, including, prominently, immigrant rights. Over that same time period, the Republican Party has been, and still is, the political arm of those opposed to the expansion of civil rights. This division has been a mixed blessing for both parties.

The political advantage of pro-rights positioning for the Democrats is that it has put the party at the forefront of social and cultural movements that have steadily gained public acceptance. The payoff was evident in Bill Clinton’s victories in 1992 and 1996 and in Obama’s in 2008 and 2012.

The political disadvantage emerges when a majority of voters see the Democratic Party as too far out in front of the electorate — as the proponent of new rights that do not yet have majority support. Republicans reaped the benefits of Democratic overreach in the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan; the “wave” midterm elections of 1994, 2010 and 2014; and the Nov. 8 election of Donald Trump.

I asked a number of political operatives and election analysts for their views on these volatile issues. There was no consensus.

Steve Murphy, a Democratic campaign consultant, argues that the power of anti-immigrant messages will be short-lived:

Trump and other Republicans, he wrote, are

simply going for a higher percentage of white votes with bigotry toward ALL people of color. America is headed toward majority minority status and these Republicans are simply betting on a white backlash. Last year they got it with a record percentage of the white vote. Will it continue to grow? History says these racist waves eventually crash on the shoals of decency.

Others disagreed.

Simon Rosenberg, president and founder of NDN (formerly the New Democratic Network), a center-left think tank in Washington, has his own argument:

Democrats will have a hard time winning this debate unless we acknowledge people’s legitimate concerns about having a functioning border and keeping people safe. Countering Trump will require us to lean into Obama’s success at halting the unauthorized flow into the country, and preventing foreign fighter terror attacks on US soil, We can be for legalizing the 11 million and more generous immigration policies while also being for a strong border and counterterrorism efforts. They aren’t mutually exclusive and shouldn’t be seen that way.

Then, addressing the 2016 campaign, Rosenberg said:

The Clinton campaign did not adequately rebut, or even really address, the xenophobic open borders/weak on terror arguments Trump made, and I think it hurt her particularly in the parts of the country where immigrants haven’t been settling in large numbers.

Nolan McCarty, a political scientist at Princeton, put it this way:

Purely in terms of politics and strategy, the Democrats have played immigration badly. They have allowed their position to be associated with open borders and sanctuary cities. They have based their opposition to the immigration restrictionists in terms of identity politics rather the economic benefits of well-managed immigration. This has caused them to be deaf to concerns that many voters have about the effects of immigration on wages and public services. While I do not think the evidence shows immigration has these alleged harms, the Democrats have to do better than dismiss all opposition to immigration as racism.

McCarty specifically disputed the argument that Clinton’s lenient position was a net plus because it was crucial in mobilizing Hispanic voters.

It was probably her underperformance in mobilizing African-Americans that hurt her most, and they are generally the group least enthusiastic about open door immigration policies.

McCarty cited an October 2016 Pew poll to show that “African-Americans support for immigration is about 15 points below Democrats overall.”

Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at N.Y.U., took a similar but broader view in disagreeing with Clinton’s immigration strategy:

Political thinkers going back to Hobbes have noted that people crave safety and will give up many freedoms to a strong leader or state if it can deliver safety. In the 1970s and 1980s, the Democrats were seen as being on the side of those accused of crime – they reflexively sided with the accused, to defend their rights and fight systemic prejudice. This made them easy targets for the Republicans, who became the party of law and order under Nixon and Reagan.

Now, in Haidt’s view, adoption of a very liberal immigration stance carries substantial liabilities:

In these times of heightened fear of ISIS attacks and slow economic growth, if you are seen to favor open borders, or to not be concerned about illegal immigration, you will be an easy target for the party of law and order.

It is, however, possible that Trump’s excesses will revive support for an immigration policy somewhere between Obama’s and Clinton’s.

Adam Bonica, a political scientist at Stanford, said that in looking toward the future

everything points to a strategic advantage for the Democrats in promoting immigration and the core values of decency and inclusiveness that their base stands for.

I asked Marc Farinella, a former political consultant and the executive director of the Project on Political Reform at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy, about the direction of the debate going forward, and he wrote back:

Trump has left the Democrats an enormous amount of running room on this issue. From a strictly strategic perspective, all Democrats have to do to capitalize politically is sound more compassionate and stand up against excessive government oppression.

In the process, the party

could also reap additional political rewards by giving voice to Americans’ desire for fairness and concerns about cheating and safety.

Farinella added that Democrats would benefit politically by making it

clear that while they oppose amnesty, they do support a path to citizenship for long-time, law-abiding and productive undocumented residents that has real work and assimilation requirements, and recognize that we do have to have efforts to identify and remove violent criminals and improve border security. Speaking exclusively in terms of the politics of the issue, all they’ll have to do is sound reasonable, humane and compassionate.

Farinella’s analysis sounds logical, but after an election that gave the White House to Donald Trump, the argument that victory will go to the candidate who sounds “reasonable, humane and compassionate” is no longer persuasive.