Border vs. abortion to be in spotlight

MILWAUKEE — With discussion of President Joe Biden’s age off the table after he ended his candidacy Sunday, the race for the White House will now be a battle over the issue that each side feels is their strongest: It’s the border vs. abortion election.

Vice President Kamala Harris, if she becomes the Democratic Party nominee, will be central to both. And that’s good news for Democrats, yes, even when it comes to immigration, as Republicans erroneously mock her for a job title she’s never held: “border czar.”

Given how many Americans have been hurt by inflation and higher prices over the past few years, Harris is “in the best position to run the ‘abortion, abortion, abortion, also dude is a criminal, abortion, abortion’ ” campaign that Democrats have run since Roe fell, author and political commentator Elie Mystal posted on X on Sunday.

On abortion, Harris would be a huge upgrade over Biden, an 81-year-old Catholic who could barely stomach saying the word “abortion.”

Democrats have consistently won elections in states where abortion was on the ballot since the Supreme Court, led by three justices appointed by Donald Trump, overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. Trump also picked Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance to be his running mate,

someone who has advocated for a national 15-week ban on abortion. Vance opposes abortion even in cases of rape or incest.

Meanwhile, the 59-year-old Harris has been the administration’s strongest voice in support of abortion rights.

“Democrats took their biggest liability, which was Biden’s age, off the table,” said Democratic pollster Ben Tulchin, a San Franciscan who was the pollster on Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaigns and is now working on House and legislative races in Michigan, Ohio and Illinois.

Talking about reproductive rights “is one of her strong suits. She really found her footing as vice president when she was prosecuting the case on abortion. And as we saw in the debate, Biden struggled to do that,” Tulchin said.

Harris replacing Biden “is going to energize the base,” said Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California CEO Jodi Hicks.

Harris was the first vice president to visit a Planned Parenthood Health Center while in office and “has kept the needs and experiences of patients and providers front and center,” Hicks said. “We know that she will continue to fight like hell to rebuild a fundamental right that was stripped away.”

Having a fighter for abortion rights at the top of the ticket becomes increasingly important as more abortion-rights supporters identify as single-issue voters. According to a February poll by Celinda Lake, surveying 1,200 likely California voters, abortion-rights supporters are 13 points more likely than antiabortion voters to say a candidate’s position on abortion is very important to their vote.

This marks the first time in decades that the issue is more important to abortion-rights supporters than it is to their adversaries, according to Lake.

Swing-state voters “have been saying their voter turnout and persuasion work would be easier with Vice President Harris than President Biden at the top of the ticket,” Zo Tobi, director of donor organizing at Movement Voter Project, a grassroots organization, told me.

Harris will be much more helpful, Tobi said, “especially among key swing-state blocs like younger voters, women and voters of color.”

But Republicans are also looking forward to seeing Harris as the Democratic nominee because they think she strengthens their top issue: protecting the southern U.S. border.

A number of delegates expressed their opposition to the nation’s immigration policy in disturbing and heartless ways at last week’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. On Wednesday, many delegates held up signs that said, “MASS DEPORTATION NOW!” while dancing to the Village People song “YMCA,” as though the idea of expelling millions of longtime residents was a joke.

And Harris has been at the center of their ire. For the past three years, Republicans have railed on Harris for being Biden’s “border czar.” It’s a catchy title, but incorrect. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas and Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra have primary responsibility for what goes on at the border.

In March 2021, Biden gave Harris a diplomatic assignment to strengthen relations with Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador and address the root causes of why migrants leave their home countries.

“So it’s not her full responsibility and job, but she’s leading the effort because I think the best thing to do is to put someone who, when he or she speaks, they don’t have to wonder about: Is that where the president is?” Biden said in 2021 while announcing the assignment. “When she speaks, she speaks for me.”

That nuance doesn’t matter to Republicans.

Last week at the Republican National Convention, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin told the California Republican Party delegation that “the reality is that every state in America is a border state today.”

“Our border czar Kamala Harris has never been there,” Youngkin said. That is incorrect; Harris visited the border in June 2021.

The larger point, as Youngkin told the delegates, was that “drugs, illegal, violent criminals, national security threats and human traffickers have turned our border literally into a revolving door is an affront to our national security and our national identity. Every state sees it.”

The revolving door is slowing. Illegal crossings across the southern border dropped to a three-year low in June after Biden hardened the nation’s asylum policies. Border Patrol agents processed roughly 84,000 migrants in June, a steep drop from 141,000 in February, according to federal figures.

Nevertheless, California Republican Party Chair Jessica Millan Patterson wondered Sunday whether Harris is “really the best backup option.”

“President Biden tasked her with solving the border crisis,” Patterson said, repeating the falsehood, “and in turn, she made our country less safe, allowing millions more to flood into our country illegally.”

Thomas Homan, formerly Trump’s acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, mocked Harris’ assignment to address the root causes of illegal immigration while mispronouncing her name, as many Republicans do.

“Ka-MAL-a Harris was a failure as border czar,” Homan said after speaking at a Heritage Foundation event in Milwaukee outside the convention. “She says she was looking for the underlying reasons. All she had to do was walk down the hall to the Oval Office, and there’s the underlying reason right there.”

But Tulchin, the Democratic pollster, doesn’t think immigration will be that damaging to the Democratic nominee “because they’ve been using the border from the beginning. That’s baked into the cake.”

The recent falling numbers of illegal border crossings helps Democrats a bit. Tulchin’s private polling in battleground states shows that if Democrats can make the case to voters that they’re devoted to strong public safety and a strict border policy, they can neutralize the Republican advantage on the immigration issue.

A June poll of Latino voters found that when it came to immigration, they were most concerned with providing a path to citizenship for people who have been in the U.S. for a long time. Their second-tier priority was cracking down on human smugglers and increasing border security.

“There is an opportunity that hasn’t been realized by Biden on immigration,” said Clarissa Martinez De Castro, vice president of the Latino Voter Initiative. “Don’t endorse the Trump vision. Mass deportation is something very few people support.”