President Biden’s stated reason for resuming construction of former President Trump’s wall along America’s southern border with Mexico—to comply with existing law as passed by Congress—is disingenuous at best. No doubt his real reason is to increase his re-election chances in 2024, especially by reducing Black disenchantment with his immigration policies.
Biden’s claim that he must spend more money on the border wall because Congress so directed is legally correct, but one should not take Biden’s sudden adherence to constitutional niceties too seriously. In the past he’s ignored the Constitution in his pursuit of various policies, especially in his quest, declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, to cancel $450 billion in student debt. It’s telling that in the same week he announced his determination to resume wall building he also launched yet another quest to cancel student debt as well.
So what’s Joe’s real reason for wall-building resumption? My guess—he fears, rightly, that the growing immigration crisis will jeopardize his re-election chances by undermining his support within the Democratic Party. After all, Democratic officials—Illinois Governor J. B. Pritzker and New York City Mayor Eric Adams—are becoming as critical of Biden’s policies as are Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, and Greg Abbott. And African American voters are becoming more and more vocal in their criticisms of Biden’s immigration policies as well. Fox News, for example, has run extensive coverage of Chicago Blacks’ anger at the influx of illegal/undocumented immigrants into the Windy City.
Black anger should be of special concern to Biden, given the role that blacks played in making him President in the first place. It was Biden’s support among Black voters in South Carolina which helped him win its primary in 2020—the first presidential primary he ever won in 32 years of pursuit of the presidency. His victory there resurrected his moribund campaign and inspired most of his primary opponents to drop out of the race and give him the opportunity to overwhelm Bernie Sanders in the Super Tuesday primaries. His appointments of Black women to the Vice Presidency and the Supreme Court reflect his understandable gratitude to Black voters for helping him become President.
Black disenchantment with his handling of the immigration issue will not drive Black voters to the GOP. But it could cause them to weaken their enthusiasm for Biden and cause too many to stay at home come Election Day, 2024. A falloff in Black voter turnout could prove fatal to his re-election chances, especially in a very close race, as what happened to Hillary Clinton in 2016 may show.
In 2016 91% of Black voters supported Clinton. But the percentage of Blacks who actually went to the polls (60%) was 10% less than the percentage who turned out to support Barack Obama in 2008 and 5% less than the percentage who turned out in 2012. It’s probable that had more Blacks gone to the polls in 2016 Hillary could have carried Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and the White House. But they didn’t, and she didn’t. The uptick in Black turnout in 2020, when 63% went to the polls and mostly voted for Biden, helps explain why he won where Clinton lost. And a downtick in Black voting in 2024 might well cause Biden to finally share Clinton’s fate at the polls.
But what about all those Democratic Progressives who’ve previously supported Biden’s refusal to continue the building of Trump’s wall? No doubt his desire to retain their loyalty even as he revives Trump’s signature policy explains why he continues to say he opposes the wall while his Secretary of Homeland Security maintains that building the wall is really not a change in the Administration’s anti-wall policy. Will those arguments fly? Will Biden be able to preserve the coalition that got him into the White House? Stay tuned. Strange things happen in politics and in the year before we actually go to the polls to elect or re-elect a president, there’s plenty of time for stranger things to continue to occur.
Malcolm L. Cross has lived in Stephenville and taught politics and government at Tarleton from 1987 until 2023. His political and civic activities include service on the Stephenville City Council (2000-2014) and on the Erath County Republican Executive Committee (1990 to the present). He was Mayor Pro Tem of Stephenville from 2008 to 2014. He is a member of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church and the Stephenville Rotary Club and does volunteer work for the Boy Scouts of America. Views expressed in this column are his and do not reflect those of The Flash as a whole.
I doubt it’s that difficult or deep of a reason. A wise man once said “It’s the economy, stupid”. That man was right. Americans everywhere, whether left or right leaning, may see the administrations bogus claims of “Bidenomics” at work, but then they go to the grocery store or put gas in their car. Not just the average American, but even the upper class of Americans are feeling the pinch. That’s because the economy has been quite succinctly decimated by Biden’s policies and the increasingly erratic, bourgeoise nature of the political elite in Washington DC, who grow evermore disconnected from average values, beliefs, and desires of the average American values.
This is because Biden and those politicians in Washington have taken the mask off. They believe in their heart of hearts that they are the new Royalty, and that we all are peasants. They believe for whatever reason that they are superior to the average person, and that the average person is of inferior stock to them and their “blue blood”. We have seen this destructive mentality seep into academia, even at Tarleton, lest anyone forget that only 8 short years ago was the dustup where Moumin Quazi publicly decried all his students who “Worshipped Columbus Day” as “bigots and nazi’s”, right on the Tarleton Sports Facebook page, and just around the same time Tarleton tried (and failed spectacularly) to seize Chamberlain Elementary School along with a whole host of citizens homes through imminent domain “because they wanted to build more”, and more recently footed tax payers with a new stadium that we couldn’t use because they wanted to hoard it to themselves. This is, put simply, vastly undeserved arrogance of a group that has an grossly exceptional overestimation of their own ability, and simultaneous underestimation of the ability of others who may disagree with them
In just 2023, we’ve seen 245 years of civic precedent cast aside like yesterday’s dirty t-shirt, blatant weaponization of the justice system at all levels, inflation so severe as to make the Dust Bowl look comfortable, attacks on our children by degenerates and deviants, and the most disdainful rhetoric possible from the administration. It calls to mind the history lessons of the French royalty in the late 1700’s, when Marie Antionette famously is thought to have said “Let them eat cake”. Both Antionette and King Louis XVI were extremely well educated and highly intelligent, but utterly and entirely blind to the suffering of their people whom they routinely sold down the river and directly worked against, all the while claiming (and by all accounts, believing) that they were “Helping” the unwashed masses.
This is because they lived in a bubble. The Royalty never leave their ivory towers or their gated communities, and thus they never experience the harsh reality of the working world. Beijing Biden’s cognitive decline may give him an excuse for such buffonary, but what about the rest of the bureaucrats? It may be the case that what the public is really starting to recognize, out of necessity due to the drivers clear intention to steer the bus off the cliff more than anything else, that the Democratic Party is made up of asinine, borderline psychotic rich kids who live in fantasy worlds, and the Republican Party is made up of Zionistic, not-so-secretly progressive war hawks that get by solely from the false pretense of having an R after their name.
So too, as we can clearly see with our own eyes by merely living day to day, do the modern royals in Washington ignore with petty childishness the cries and concerns of the public, lash out with fervent hatred at anyone who challenges them with an overwhelming amount of vitriol, and with reckless glee continue to drive the bus that is our nation closer and closer to the cliff (though at this point while arguably also lighting the bus on fire and shooting anyone who tries to put it out in the face).
This is because it IS the economy, stupid. None of these things are new, in fact they’ve been moving in this direction since at least the Lincoln administration. American’s have been increasingly willing to tolerate abuses, both from the State and Federal government, and even their own local governments, simply because “it’s too much work to deal with”, or for fear of being ostracized when those in power designate them “Deplorables”. That all goes out the window though, when the economy is in shambles. And one should not expect it to get better anytime soon, considering that after pumping more than 83 billion US Tax dollars into Ukraine (in quite possibly the biggest money laundering scam in global history) Washington immediately pivoted from this universally disliked tactic to yet ANOTHER war in the middle east with the oddly well timed and funded attack by Hamas onto Israel, championed by BOTH Democrats and Republicans, with even current candidates for the Republican nominee such as Nicky Haley outright calling publicly for the Israeli Prime Minister to “Finish them”. Never mind you though, that the Levant has been the most violent and brutal flashpoint in the world for about the last 2000 years, with various religious groups and nations butchering each other none-stop. In fact both CNN and Fox News insist that if you remember correctly that both Israel and Palestine have engaged in unprovoked attacks upon each other and their neighbors, most of which explicitly targeted civilians, then you are just a bigot and UNAMERICAN.
Because at the end of the day, they fear you. They fear MAGA. They fear the sensible, and very common place belief by most Americans that “We really ought to stay out of it, and focus on ourselves.”. They fear it because right now, Americans are hurting enough to actually be willing to deny the arrogant Bourgeoise their way, and are saying without fear and from both sides of the political aisle:
It’s the economy, stupid.