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Open Borders?
Democrat contenders are heading for a disaster of their own making as they completely fail to discuss the most important issue impacting American voter today: illegal immigration. Despite what the legacy media would like you to believe, concerns over illegal immigration, and more importantly, the impact this has on the country, is not just a bugbear for the more right-leaning voter.
A recent Harvard/Harris poll should be sending shockwaves through a party that has long thought itself on the “right” side of the immigration debate.
Liberty Nation’s Sarah Cowgill breaks down exactly who is concerned and what those percentages are:
It’s a whopper of a number – 64%. And it was the top issue with 66% of swing voters, too. Before you ask, among black and Hispanic voters, it was the second most incendiary position, just below increasing taxes to fund social programs.
And those Harvard/Harris stat collectors also discovered voters are nearly universally (85%) opposed to giving illegal aliens the right to vote. San Francisco is one offender of incorporating illegal alien votes in citywide schoolboard elections. Here is where the candidates went mum on immigration: 80% of Democrat voters, 86% of so-called swing voters, 75% of self-identifying as liberal folks, 77% of black Americans, and 73% of Hispanic voters all find this idea damn near offensive.
If even traditional Democrat voters are calling for illegal immigrants to be dealt with, ignoring your voter base is not going to be a shrewd move come 2020.
What to Watch For
The polling data is unlikely to sway contenders from their course. At the moment they need to appeal to around 30% of the primary voters, as the race tightens, they’ll need to get nearer the magic halfway point. Don’t expect any real talk on immigration reform until the candidacy is in the bag, at which point, it may well become the central plank of their presidential campaign … but will it be too late?
Harris Failing
From what was a promising start to her campaign, Kamala Harris just seems to be taking blow after blow. Whether it is her reluctance to state a position on any one topic or her near-constant insistence on answering questions by saying “We’ll have a conversation about that,” she has failed to ignite voters. While it is still in the early stages, Harris may be boring the electorate to the point of disinterest.
With gambling odds putting her at 16/1, she has become a major outsider with almost no chance of making it onto the ballot alone. Not being a top-tier player, she has also become easy pickings for the big beasts who have played the game before.
Liberty Nation’s Mark Angelides wrote about how cash bettors are viewing the Harris campaign:
The real story this week was the effective end of Kamala Harris’ campaign to be president. Although her betting odds remained at 16/1, national and regional polling gave her some heavy hits. In all recent polling, Harris failed to break into the top three spots, in many cases having just half the support of the third position candidate.
What previously looked like an almost guaranteed VP offer is no longer quite so certain. The top-tier candidates, Biden, Warren, and Sanders, will have a tough sell to the DNC who are looking for at least one “less white” face to pitch to intersectionally-minded voters. Kamala Harris has failed to ignite the electorate and may need to start facing up to a harsh reality: Her campaign is over.
But here’s the problem for the Harris campaign: It knows it’s almost finished, but reviving it would have to be at the expense of other candidates … this means cutting off possible routes to the VP spot.
What to Watch For
It appears that only the VP spot is achievable. To win this, harris will have to soften her already weak positions to become a viable soundboard for the eventual winning candidate. In her favor, she still maintains a lot of donor support in California that will prove decisive as the candidate field shrinks.
Washington Whispers & Other Juicy Tidbits
Be on the lookout for:
- Beto O’Rourke may have bitten off more than he can chew by pushing his mandatory gun buyback scheme. It was a brave move, and perhaps one that he feels strongly about, but “brave” in political terms can also be read as “career-ending.” Watch out for a few more days in the limelight before he realizes he has blown his campaign and begins to backpedal.
- Be on the lookout for media outlets coalescing around Biden and Warren. Now that it seems the lead candidate will be either one of these two, the legacy media will be demanding that they start attacking Trump in preparation for the election. This is a double-edged sword, however, as Hillary Clinton discovered. If they spend all their ammunition now, they will appear stale and uninventive when it comes to the real fight.
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