Democratic leaders aren’t inciting attacks on Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers out of pure hatred for Donald Trump and his administration. Their motives are strategic. Practical. By undermining immigration enforcement, they protect a pipeline of future Democratic voters — including violent criminals like the “family man from Maryland.”

Once these illegal aliens receive driver’s licenses, they’ll land on voter rolls. They already count in the census, inflating congressional representation in blue states teeming with illegal immigrants. Democrats didn’t bring these “newcomers” here just to deport them.

Republicans imagine that all or at least most Americans are on the same wavelength with them. But that may not be the case.

If activists now ambush and shoot ICE agents, Democratic leaders seem to treat that as a price worth paying to preserve their long-term electoral advantage. And they can count on the corporate left-wing media to help them.

The press operates as an extension of the Democratic Party, not just in the United States but across the Western world. CNN, NBC, and MSNBC broadcast the same spin you’ll hear on CBC, BBC, Deutsche Welle, and France 4. With this media backing, Democrats face little scrutiny — even when they tacitly abet violence against federal agents.

Right now, public support for deportations hovers around 50%, and it might be higher if the media didn’t stage-manage the narrative. Watch a few minutes of network television or skim the New York Times, and you’ll come away thinking border czar Tom Homan’s raids target preschoolers and migrant field hands.

Fox News insists the anti-Trump mobs are just fringe radicals. They’re not. A massive leftist electorate just nominated Zohran Mamdani to be the next mayor of New York City, and if the polls mean anything, he just might win in the fall. Other major cities are led by mayors only slightly less radical — Karen Bass in Los Angeles, Brandon Johnson in Chicago, Michelle Wu in Boston. When it comes to immigration, they’re just as hostile to ICE and just as gushingly sympathetic to illegal aliens as Mamdani.

The “people” voted for these multicultural, America-be-damned leftists. The fantasy that Democratic voters are victims of a hijacked party is infantile nonsense. A growing share of the American electorate has radicalized — including black voters, government employees, and especially college-educated white women, who dominate the culturally leftist bloc in my own Pennsylvania borough.

Despite years of street violence, riots, and inflammatory rhetoric, the Democrats haven’t collapsed. They still hold a slight edge in the generic congressional ballot. RealClearPolitics polling shows the GOP ahead by only seven points. The Democrats may have lost ground — but they’re far from finished.

RELATED: ‘The Suicide Squad’: How Democrats keep blowing themselves up

Photo by David Dee Delgado/Getty Images

Let’s not forget: In the last presidential election, Democrats lost the popular vote by just two million votes, running a hapless candidate against an incumbent with enormous political energy. That’s how effective the Democratic machine remains — even in a lopsided matchup.

No one should mistake this for incompetence or insanity. Yes, the party boasts plenty of scatterbrained motor mouths such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas), and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.). But don’t confuse theatrics with disarray. Democratic leaders push grotesque policies — mutilating children with “gender-affirming” surgeries, putting men in women’s sports, promoting race-based discrimination — but voters haven’t punished them for it.

Republican observers tend to judge the other side by their own standards. They also imagine that all or at least most Americans are on the same wavelength with them. But that may not be the case. Democrats don’t even pretend to feel regret when ICE officers take a bullet or when anarchists torch city blocks. They know their base relishes in the havoc.

This is calculated politics. Democrats want to expand their base through mass migration and lawfare, not persuasion. That’s cold strategy, not insanity.

If Republicans want to win, they need to stop imagining their opponents are self-destructing lunatics. They aren’t. Democrats play to win. The GOP must prepare for a real fight — not fantasyland.