Trump and the Republicans are basically staking everything on the border issue. To me, it’s a bad bet. Yes, the American public is concerned about chaos and cost; it wants an orderly system, and it doesn’t want to pay for it. But it doesn’t support deliberate acts of cruelty, which are exactly what the Trump campaign has to offer, and it can see for itself that the allegations about immigrants committing massive numbers of crimes and causing inflation are rubbish.
Harris needs to get out front on this issue. It isn’t enough to argue that the situation has improved over the last few months, and that Trump torpedoed a legislative compromise that would have helped sooner. Harris should spend a lot of time talking about the Trump plan, including the unlawful raids by the military, the massive deportation camps, the cruelty of family separation, and the impacts to the economy of deporting so many essential workers. The public has no idea this is on the menu. It needs to know ASAP.