In a complete one-eighty from traditional democratic values and in response to increasing anger over illegal immigration at the Southern border, Vice President Kamala Harris is now promising to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into one of the latest, state-of-the-art innovations in the field of preventing trespass—building a wall. Sound familiar to something a former president once wanted to build? That’s because it is literally the exact same thing. Donald Trump’s border wall, something Harris once called “a medieval vanity project” and a “stupid use of money,” has drawn scathing criticism from Democrats (an automatic response to anything Trump says or does) since the very beginning. Nancy Pelosi herself stated that Democrats would never fund Trump’s “immoral, ineffective, and expensive wall.”
In 2018, after Republicans tried to pass funding for the wall’s construction, Democrats actually shut the U.S. government down for three months in order to prevent its passing. It was the longest government shutdown in U.S. history and cost the economy over ten billion dollars. So how exactly has Kamala Harris been getting away with this abrupt backflip, suddenly arguing for something that Trump has always fought for (not that she’ll admit that)? No powerful Democratic figure has called her out, and none of the liberal news stations that condemned Trump for saying “build a wall” seem to have a problem with Harris’ wall. The answer? They don’t believe her. Presidential candidates running for office have a history of making promises that are popular with the public to gain votes and then breaking them in office. In 2016, one of Trump’s main campaign promises was to build a border wall between Mexico and the U.S., which obviously has still not happened. Countless Democrats have refrained from attacking Harris over immigration in order to avoid hurting her chances in an already tight battle.
Despite Harris’ repeated promises to pass a bill that would seriously tighten border security for immigrants, many pro-immigration groups have also decided to endorse her. Why? They aren’t taking her seriously either. Kerri Talbolt, director of Immigration Hub, endorsed Harris in an interview with Axios, but in the same breath remarked, “I don’t think this [the border] bill will ever come up again.” Simply put, these groups are willing to support Harris because they do not trust her promises, which, come to think of it, sounds like something my English teacher would call an oxymoron. Nevertheless, Latino voters at least seem to be taking Harris seriously—and not in a good way. Before Harris, the Democratic Party’s support of immigration had helped them build a loyal base among Latino voters, a long-lasting advantage that is quickly dying under Kamala Harris’ campaign. Polls from the NY Times and Siena College have revealed a historic plummet in support among non-white voters for the Democratic party. Data has shown that Latino men could vote Republican in numbers not seen since the 1950s. In such a narrow race, these votes will mean the difference between victory or defeat for Kamala Harris. Yet when Harris’ past handling of the border has been something even she is trying to distance herself from and her current border policies flip flop from far left to radical right, it is hard to see voters being very inspired.
