From 'illegal' to 'abolish ICE': Gillibrand grapples with past conservative immigration views

After announcing a White House bid amid a historic government shutdown over President Donald Trump's demands for a border wall, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., spent her first week on the 2020 stump explaining and expressing regret over her own hard-line immigration views a decade ago.

"I did not think about suffering in other people's lives," she said last Sunday in an interview on CNN. "I realized that things I had said were wrong. I was not caring about others."

In an interview with MSNBC's Rachel Maddow days earlier, she said her past views were not "driven from my heart. I was callous to the suffering of families that want to be together."

It's perhaps an unavoidable reckoning for a seasoned politician in a party that's moved rapidly to the left during the last decade. But as electability emerges as a central issue on the campaign trail, Democrats are increasingly willing to say they were wrong.

Gillibrand isn't the only one reconciling past views. Ahead of a potential bid, former Vice President Joe Biden said that his past criminal justice stances haven't always "been right." Not long after announcing that she was exploring her own 2020 campaign, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, apologized for her past views on LGBT rights.

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