Rerun
Look, it’s 2024. It seems like this Presidential election year started about six months after Biden was inaugurated in 2021, but now we’re really, finally, (sadly), here. Biden is going to be the Democratic nominee, “God willing and the river don’t rise”. Almost inevitably, Trump is going to be the Republican nominee. So, like it or not, we are in for a “rerun” of 2020, this time hopefully, without a world pandemic to upstage every other issue.
At first it seemed that James Carville’s wise intonation would hold the day; “It’s the economy, stupid”. Biden was saddled with inflation, an unavoidable side effect of the successful efforts to avoid a Covid depression. Most Americans don’t remember the crushing inflation of the 1970’s, averaging almost 10% a year throughout Jimmy Carter’s Administration.
The past couple years felt “really bad”: 2021 at 7% and 2022 at 6.5%. But last year it was down near 3% and this year looks even better. So the inflation issue won’t have the impact Republicans wanted. (Gee, gas prices were down to $2.53 yesterday, even here in the Amazon van bubble!)
Binary Choice
Biden used a phrase in 2020 that still resonates in 2024: “Don’t compare me to the Almighty, compare me to the alternative”. In the “binary choice” of Biden versus Trump, there are several key issues where voters face a black or white decision. Trump embraced the results of “his” Supreme Court appointees in the Dodds case; abortion is now a state by state issue. And the Pro-Life crowd made their goal clear: end abortion care nationwide. That’s mobilized voters, particularly women, even in Republican places like Kansas, Ohio, and Kentucky. If women want to be able to control their own bodies, Biden is the only answer.
And in foreign policy the division is clear. Support Ukraine, vote for Biden. Want Russia to take over Ukraine, support Trump and his friend Putin. The current Israeli War is more complicated. The media makes a big deal about the Democratic split over the Israeli strategy of destruction of Gaza to destroy Hamas. But the comparison (Almighty versus alternative) is obvious. Trump would give his good friend Benjamin Netanyahu a completely free hand in Gaza, Biden is the only moderating force. If you want to support the Palestinians and don’t like what Biden is doing, what’s the alternative? Vote for Trump? Or, don’t vote at all, and allow Trump to gain the Presidency?
Caravan
So Republicans returned to an old strategy, one we remember from the elections of 2016 and 2018. There’s a “caravan” coming to the Southern border. Thousands (Fox News says eight thousand) headed to the border. They are still a thousand miles away, but when they get here, the border will be overwhelmed. And Biden isn’t ready!
Republican Governor Greg Abbott of Texas has his solution: militarize the border, arm it with razor wire, walls and armed troops, and arrest anyone who manages to get through for illegal crossing then send them back to Mexico. Make illegal migration Mexico’s problem.
The problem with that solution is twofold. First, it creates a “death zone” at the border, that is guaranteed to kill some migrants trying to get through. The “deterrence” concept that migrants won’t come if it’s “bad enough” just doesn’t work. They continue to come, and drown in the Rio Grande, get tangled in the barbed wire, and their kids get sick and die from exposure. Ultimately those armed troops will use their weapons, and we have the catastrophe of American troops shooting migrants.
And second, it creates a lawless zone on the Mexico side of the border, with towns overwhelmed with the humanitarian burden of hundreds of thousands of migrants. Exposure, starvation, disease and crime will not remain just a Mexican problem. It simply raises the stakes, and drives the migrants into the clutches of the “coyotes” who will offer them a way out through the wilderness onto American soil. And more will die in the desert, trying to get to America.
Solutions
Fixing the border crisis is complicated. We have treaty obligations to let people try to claim asylum in the United States. The conditions in Central and South America driving migration are worse, far worse than even Governor Abbott is willing to create on the border. So until that improves, folks are still going to leave their homes, risk the Darien crossing, pay extortion to the gangs, and show up in Juarez or Matamoras, or Tijuana; to come to America.
The United States absolutely must do a better job of administering the border. It’s a legal, medical, ethical, issue. And the United States can use more workers in the economy; there is a ready supply to be tapped at the border. The political reality is: a solution at the border isn’t in the Republican Party’s best interest. With all of the other issues falling in Biden’s favor, Trump needs the Border. That remains a “thorn in the side” of the Biden Presidency. And besides, it’s all Trump’s got.
