Why Kamala Lost
by John Lawrence
She did not emphasize middle class tax cuts enough. They were certainly part of her program, and she would mention them in her stump speeches, but she needed to do a lot more than mention them. She needed to go on and on about them. She needed to compare them to the tax cuts given to the middle class by Trump, and not just say that Trump's cuts were mainly for the rich. To a large extent they were, but the middle class got at least something. She needed to emphasize how her middle class tax cuts compared favorably with the tax cuts Trump gave to the middle class, and not just say Trump's tax cuts were largely for the rich which of course they were.
Also Kamala and the Democrats were johhny-come-latelies to border security. They finally got on board with that, but saying that Trump defeated a plan in Congress that would have solved the problem was just not enough. Border security should have become a consensus issue between both parties long before it did. Democrats were late to the party. The idea that a couple could pay coyote fees of about $3000-4000 (data from the Mexican Migration Project) and crawl through a fence, request asylum and be given a court date 5 years hence during which time they could have 3 or 4 children who were legal US citizens is absolutely ridiculous. Then what are you going to do - deport the parents and leave their US citizen children here? It took Democrats far too long to get on top of this issue at least from a rhetorical perspective. The huge number that crossed during Biden's term doomed Kamala's potential term. The US has satellite technology that can spot a flea on a dog. Yet they can't use that technology to spot illegal entrants and immediately deport them. It doesn't make sense
I'm for increased legal immigration, but I'm also for strengthening the border to the point where any illegal immigration is next to impossible. The US spends a trillion dollars a year on its military and has military bases in almost every country in the world and yet cannot enforce a border so that people can only enter at legal ports of entry? Ridiculous! So now Trump gets to take credit for that solution, now that there IS a consensus about it. Democrats missed the ball and didn't articulate a coherent position successfully on this matter soon enough. As far as what to do about the illegals that are currently already here, that's a whole different matter. You can't really deport them if they have had legal US children citizens in the meantime. I guess they outsmarted the government, and in particular Joe Biden's government although to be fair Congress did nothing to help Biden solve that problem even after he was willing to do so. The mistake was to consider it a left-right issue. Left-right doesn't make sense any more. You don't have to position every issue on the left-right spectrum. Pragmatism should rule the day, and Kamala represented that, but it was too late.
