Here is how politics works. If you are afraid of a candidate who is antithetical to everything you hold dear about this country and has already proven his willingness to lie and break the law. If you worry about losing everything you count on like decency, social security and health care, then the only civil way to stop his agenda is to vote for the opposing party, even if you are not thrilled with all of their policies either.
Trump has been very open and obvious about his very conservative Maga takeover of the Republican party. He isn’t undercover about announcing his affection for everything from dictatorships to antisemitism. Knowing this, a strong counter punch from the Democrats should have been in the works years ago. BUT the Democrats were busy being taken over by their own identity politics and the woke agenda exemplified by their very own overcorrect after the George Floyd tragedy. Instead of fighting racism as we should, now everything must be viewed from this monolithic lens. But that is for another discussion. Suffice it to say this takeover of the Democratic party by its ‘identitarian’ left wing, is partly responsible for fueling the empire that Trump is building with the 2025 project. See https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf
Democrats should have been letting go of their old political narratives and restructuring their strategy in order to beat someone who has been making up his own rules since before his first election adjacent to his lies, too numerous to count.
But there is no time for beratement now. The political heat is ticking up alongside the climate change heat here in the summer of 2024, and a successful Harris campaign is what is needed in order to beat Trump, unless there is an unlikely open Democratic convention. Trump’s attempt to be anointed the last president we will ever vote for is motivation for me to write about her Achilles heel so that she can overcome it and slide into victory.
Harris has a lot going for her. She is bold and brave. She speaks well and has lots of experience. She comes across on television well, although her popularity ratings have been less than stellar, mostly due to her sidestepping her authentic self in her last bid for the presidency. She was tough on truancy in California and was successful, but due to the far left climate, she had to put that under wraps, something she should talk about now. She needs to get ahead of them defining her and define herself. Take the bull by the horns. Yes, Wall Street is doing great but Wall Street is not the economy. Wall Street mega corporations are keeping their money and squeezing out even more with the lowered taxes handed to them by Trump and are deliberately keeping prices high with eye-popping greed for the average consumer just so their portfolios can grow to infinity and beyond. She may risk some donations for that one, but it is the truth.
One of Harris’s often-discussed weaknesses is the immigration issue. Harris is associated with her attempt to solve the border crisis with her “Root causes” proposal, now deemed an expensive failure from both sides of the aisle. Her task to solve a multi-layered long-entrenched problem was full of quicksand before she was ever assigned the worst job in Washington. I want to offer her a way out of this mess.
Now is the time to grab the microphone and change course on this issue and reclaim a better future for Americans under the Democratic party banner. It’s time for the Democratic party to do its own flag waving, and not hide from its duty to protect America threatened by taking on too many at a time when resources are being stressed at every level. Because she must win to prevent Trump from creating his dictatorship fantasy where he is king and immune from all prosecution among other unspeakable evils, she must create a new way forward on immigration which makes her more electable.
It is an understatement to say that this is challenging needle to thread, but it is one that is needed and long overdue. She must create a bold, truthful narrative and one that both is full of respectful language while acknowledging the grim reality that our country had been damaged by the immigration policies of the Biden administration. From the failings of sanctuary cities to streams of migrants overflowing our borders, everyone has suffered. We have suffered all across this country because millions of newcomers cannot be easily absorbed by our cities or citizen because our population is not the 190,895,000 it was when Harris was born, (in 1964) it is now bursting at the seams with over 366,000,000. This is a critical moment with an important opportunity to update our story on immigration, first by talking numbers and then by parsing the difference between immigrants and mass immigration.
She must address our nation’s voters and say, “Of course we don’t hate immigrants, we are a nation of immigrants, but we are at a different time in our history.” “We are no longer dominated by amber waves of grain, we are full of over 366 million Americans and can no longer fool ourselves that we can accommodate mass immigration, much of it illegal, because of how it will hurt most Americans.” “There are complicated reasons for the fuel behind the desires of migrants to come to our shores. Unsustainable growth in many countries is certainly one of them. Blaming the US history of exploitation of global resources as the only reason for the misery and suffering of those at our borders is no excuse to dissolve the sociological and ecological integrity within our sovereign borders, dashing the hopes and dreams of our own citizens.”
Next, she must articulate a new story. Harris must firmly say that our commitment is first to Americans whose tax money cannot go to those who have just arrived, often without invitation or permission, before it goes to the demands of the already marginalized.
She must continue to say, “Our commitment must be to our own downtrodden before we open the gates and try to take care of the world’s poor.” “My first commitment is to the over 500,000 people already living on our streets.” Mass immigration will only increase that number.” “The way to combat the injustices suffered by immigrants is not with more injustice doled out to those who are already struggling with housing and health care issues.”
Democrats used to have labor in their pockets but no more. To get them back, Harris has to educate the voter that changing her tune on immigration is another way to show her support for the working class. Labor advocates are currently pushing for ‘Proact’, a piece of legislation which will protect worker’s right to organize and demand better health care, wages and other benefits. She can support this and say that it will be easier to accomplish without the competition from immigrants coming in unsustainable numbers and willing to undercut wages in order to work. Trump knows how to promise things to the working class without delivering on his false promises. Some even believe that this man born into riches is a self-made man. Harris has a chance to differentiate herself from his façade and become the true choice for working people.
A third benefit of curbing immigration is that it is a nod in the direction of helping climate change. America is experiencing wildfires and strong storms which is the fallout of our contribution to carbon. When a person comes from an underdeveloped country to the US their carbon footprint expands four-fold. Taking a new stance on immigration could help her strengthen her commitment to mitigating climate change.
The good news is that according to a new Gallup poll, https://news.gallup.com/poll/647123/sharply-americans-curb-immigration.aspx a majority of adult Americans say that they want to curb immigration. If Harris crafts a new and may I say more sustainable way forward, she has a better chance of winning in the fall, which would be a win for all Americans, whether they know it now or not.