Social Action Australia (SAA) unfortunately cannot support the United States of America (USA) Republican ticket of Donald J Trump and JD Vance for the November 2024 presidential election because should this presidential ticket prevail then the indications are that the USA could terminate its military aid to the Ukraine. Such a scenario would be disastrous for Europe and the world because should Russia conquer Ukraine then Moscow will have a base from which to launch further wars of aggression within Eastern Europe.

There is also the distinct prospect that should the Trump/Vance ticket prevail in November 2024 that communist mainland China might subsequently launch an invasion against the Republic of China (ROC) in Taiwan. Although Senator J D Vance has declared that a future Trump administration will engage against Chinese communist aggression in Asia, such assurances might be rendered obsolete should Ukraine fall to Russia.

Having said all that, it is not axiomatic that the SAA supports the nomination and election of Kamala Harris as president.

The Biden-Harris Administration’s Reprehensible Open Border Strategy

Under Vice-President Kamala Harris’s watch as the so-called ‘border Tsar’ the Biden administration deliberately opened up the USA’s southern border to facilitate a massive influx of refugees (estimated at over ten million who arrived in three and a half years) which can only be described as reprehensible. It was a policy undertaken so that these refugees could later be amnestied to be given the right to vote based on the calculation that these future new citizens would then be able to tip the outcome of future elections in favour of their sponsoring Democrats.

The Republicans are aware of the Democrat’s demographic electoral strategy. Therefore, the impending Democrat nomination of Kamala Harris, will inevitably orient the subsequent election campaign into a continuation of the already festering southern border issue which will not only firm up the Republican’s own base but will also potentially win over millions of undecided voters to the GOP, possibly including many traditional Democrat supporters.

Already the signs are there that the Democrats’ electoral base is coming under assault from the Republicans on the immigration issue. The president of the Teamsters’ Union Sean O’Brien spoke at the Republicans’ July 2024 Milwaukee Convention to support the Trump/Vance presidential ticket. This potential defection of sections of organized labour to the Republicans is not a surprising development because the massive influx of migrants in the contemporary American context is placing a downward pressure on wages so that millions of American workers may very well shift their support to the Trump/Vance presidential ticket.

Why the Abortion Issue will not Broaden the Democrats’ Electoral Strategic Choices

To attempt to shore up their electoral base the Democrats will undoubtedly campaign on the red-hot issue of abortion. The USA’s Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn the 1973 precedent of Rowe vs Wade is welcomed by SAA due to our pro-life policy stance.

However, because millions of Americans unfortunately support the availability of abortion they voted Democrat in the November 2022 mid-term congressional elections. As a result of this so-called ‘pro-Choice’ vote, the Republican majority in the House of Representatives was smaller than expected and the GOP failed to regain control of the Senate.

It should however be pointed out that Donald Trump has brilliantly and successfully defused the abortion issue by correctly pointing out that the judicial overturning of Roe vs Wade removes the previous constitutional barrier for state legislatures to ban abortion. Therefore, Donald Trump will be able to effectively argue in the upcoming presidential election campaign that abortion is a state issue and not a federal one.

Consequently, should there be a-Harris led campaign based on abortion it will only serve to reinforce the pro-life vote for the Trump-Vance ticket while failing to pick up as many ‘pro-Choice’ (sic) voters as the Democrats might hope for.  

 Should Kamala Harris win in November 2024 and subsequently fulfil her campaign promise to sign legislation legalising abortion then her presidency will be a colossal failure. This will be because such an action will serve to polarize the nation so that the United States will not have the subsequent capacity to successfully counter communist Chinese and Russian ambitions to dominate the world. The same scenario would also occur if a pro-life American president was to sign national legislation outlawing abortion.

Why a Democrat ‘Eisenhower’ should have been Nominated

The Democrats could have avoided possible Republican victories in the respective presidential and congressional elections in November 2024 by adopting an ‘Eisenhower Option’ of drafting a prestigious retired military hero or a very talented civilian technocrat to run for president. Such a presidential candidate could have subsequently served as an excellent president.

Because the Democrats will nominate Vice-President Kamala Harris, the Republicans will deservedly attack this vice-president for her culpability for the Biden administration’s open border policy which was integral to the Democrats’ long term electoral strategy of expanding their potential voting base at the expense of the nation’s well-being.

Had the Democrats gone with the ‘Eisenhower Option’ at their August convention in Chicago, then such a presidential candidate could have defused the very potent southern border issue by advocating that effective border controls be re-established.

This would not necessarily mean that the Democrats’ immigration policy would have become indistinguishable from the Trump Republicans. This is because Senator J D Vance has publicly declared that a future Trump administration will deport millions of illegal migrants who have entered the United States due to the Biden-Harris administration’s open southern border policy.

Why Immigration Controls Will Bolster the Political Centre

To deport millions of illegal migrants would be a logistical and humanitarian nightmare which might pave the way for authoritarianism to creep into American domestic policy. The drafting of a future Democrat ‘Eisenhower’ presidential candidate could have seen the public ruling out such a horrendous policy of mass deportation while still publicly undertaking to secure the USA’s southern border.

Centrist Democrats should not shy away from re-imposing border controls regarding immigration. This is because as recent European politics has shown in relation to France, Italy and Germany, that untrammelled migration precipitates the rise of the far-right. In the American context the ramifications of the Biden-Harris administration’s immigration policy is shifting the USA to the hard right with the distinct possibilities of authoritarianism creeping into American domestic policy and isolationism prevailing in American foreign policy.