Americans Voted For Trump In Order To Close The Border-It Was All About The Border
Like Brexit in 2016, the 2024 election was a voter outcry to close the border
By David Grace (Amazon Page — David Grace Website)
As someone who was horribly, completely wrong in my election predictions, of course I am more than merely curious about why Harris lost so badly.
Here is my hindsight take on it.
Brexit Was The Dead Canary In The Coal Mine
First and foremost, for at least the last four years the Democrats have totally failed to comprehend the lesson of Brexit. Back in 2016 none of the American or British “talking heads” seriously thought that the British people would actually vote to secede from the European Union, but they did. Why?
The answer lies in one word: Homeland.
Protecting The Homeland Is A Primal Impulse
The Fatherland, Mother Russia, Homeland Security — at their core the people of every culture have an ingrained resolve to protect their homeland.
The lesson of the Brexit vote was clear. The rise of right-wing, nationalist candidates all across Europe who were riding a wave of opposition to immigration was similarly obvious.
The Republicans understood this. The MAGA people burned with this. Trump inflamed this.
Trump’s “build the wall” rhetoric had been blatant since 2016, yet the Democrats never saw the tsunami of anti-immigration sentiment that was building all across Western countries.
Trump Voters Believed That The Border Has To Be Closed Now
The ordinary voter didn’t necessarily believe Trump’s lies about millions of rapists and murderers flooding across the border, but they did see almost daily footage of waves of poor, untrained, non-English-speaking immigrants surging into the United States.
They saw the bus loads of foreigners arriving in their cities. They saw these unasked, poor, untrained, uneducated, unwanted immigrants as a personal threat to their money, their safety and their homeland.
Who was going to feed these people? Who was going to house them? Who was going to educate them? Who was going to provide their medical care? Who was going to pay for all of that?
Millions of people who had legally emigrated to the U.S. were outraged that these immigrants were being allowed to “cut the line.” Millions more legal immigrants had the feeling that now that they had gotten into the country that the door should be closed behind them.
This was an emotional response to what these existing immigrants and ordinary Americans saw as an invasion of their homeland by people they didn’t invite here, people they didn’t want here, and people whom they would be taxed to support.
And their fear wasn’t about just the immigrants who were already here. It was the fear of millions more who Trump warned would swarm the border over the next four years if the Democrats won.
Inflation was the stalking horse argument. AN issue. THE real reason Trump won so big was his promise to close the Border.
Why Didn’t Biden Close The Border & Defuse This Issue?
Biden/Harris didn’t even consider (and probably today would not consider) capping political asylum entrants at 10,000 or 20,000 per year, essentially closing the border because the Progressive wing of the Democratic party would have refused to go along. Biden didn’t want to upset them because with a divided congress he needed their support.
The compromise bill that Trump killed was too little, too late.
The problem was that in preserving the support of the Progressives the Democrats lost the White House, the Senate and possibly the House.
If Biden had acted to seal the border back in 2022, Harris might have won. But he didn’t and, again, in hindsight, that doomed her candidacy.
Biden escaped it in 2020, but by 2024 that wave was just too powerful for the Democrats to resist and in 2024 the Republicans surfed it all the way into control of the government.
What Could Biden Have Done About The Border?
Ignore The Progressives
Biden could have ignored the left wing of his party and proposed a border deal with the Republicans in 2021 or 2022.
If Biden had had the sense not to run again, he could have proposed a deal with the Republicans to close the border, said to hell with the Progressives, and then announced that he would not run again, letting the left-wing blame him while the centrists battled out the nomination in the primaries.
Immediately after her nomination Harris could have announced a break with Biden and proposed her own sweeping border policy.
In hindsight, I’m not convinced that would have been enough for her to win, but at least it would have helped the Democrat’s down-ticket races.
Explain That The Political Asylum Laws Were Enacted To Help People Fleeing Communism
Biden/Harris could have started controlling the border issue with the simple and absolutely factually-true statement that the idea of allowing someone who is under threat from their government to skip the normal immigration process was a Cold War scheme designed to embarrass the communist countries and allow people who managed to escape the Soviet Union and its satellites to enter the U.S.
It was not a problem for us then. We weren’t likely to face hundreds of thousands of East Germans, Poles and Hungarians surging across the Atlantic Ocean every year.
Explain That Everyone With A Bad Gov’t Can’t Move Here
But, the language of the asylum statute opened the door for people from Cuba, Venezuela, Guatemala, El Salvador, etc. to skip the established immigration procedures, cut the line, and live here if they could just get across the border
The reality is that America cannot take in everyone living in the Caribbean, Central America and South America whose government is oppressive and whose economic conditions are a disaster, not to mention the hundreds of millions of people in the rest of the world who want to come here.
Replace The Existing Asylum Laws With A New Plan
Biden/Harris could have explained these facts as the rationale for replacing the current asylum laws with new legislation:
- (1) Asylum seekers would have to be legally inside the U.S. to apply
- (2) No one in the country illegally could be granted asylum.
- (3) Political asylum would be limited to 10,000 people per year;
- (4) Undocumented people who had lived in the U.S. for at least ten years and who had paid taxes for at least seven years and who had no felony convictions and who had no more than one misdemeanor conviction could get a green card.
- (5) The President and the Secretary of State could each designate an additional 1,000 people/year who could be legally admitted at his/er personal discretion
Would the Republicans have gone for that deal? You tell me.
The Border Was The Key That Trump Turned To Open The Door To Power
But the Democrats didn’t even consider such a plan, and their inaction gave Trump the issue he needed to win the White House, the Senate and possibly the House. The Democrats will also lose a substantial portion of the Judiciary and the bureaucracy.
Now that he is inside the building Trump has all the levers of government in his hands and no guardrails to prevent him from doing whatever he and his right-wing, fundamentalist, gun nut, plutocrat, big corporate, Wall Street backers want done.
We will be lucky if by 2028 we will still have free elections and a free press. Read the steps that Hitler took in Germany beginning in 1933 to consolidate his power and rule as a dictator. That’s Trump’s roadmap for us.
I Expect Trump To Create His Own Presidential Police Force
Hitler had the Gestapo. I expect that within the first year Trump will establish a separate police agency answerable to him within the Department of Homeland Security. Trump will call his something like the Presidential Security Department.
It’s commander will report directly to the Secretary of Homeland Security, but s/he will actually take their orders from Trump’s White House.
These will be the Federal Officers who will show up at your door when you or your newspaper or your TV network does something Trump doesn’t like. Let’s hope I’m also wrong about this. That would be great.
— David Grace (Amazon Page — David Grace Website)