Yes. It is usually seen as the least personally relevant of the major areas. And that is probably true this year, though by less.
The obvious low-lying fruit is a secure Trump border compared to a wide-open, terrorist-infiltrating Harris border, or a strong Trump economy compared to a crappy Harris economy. Both rely on statistics — which can be muddied in the field of “lies, damnable lies and then statistics,” where the Democrat media excels. This very moment, Media Team Kamala is telling us that border crossings are lower than in Trump’s final year (category: “damnable lies”) and look at that GDP surpassing expectations!
These are undoubtedly still the best issues for Trump to campaign on, and he will. But the area that cannot be muddled up with statistical lies is foreign policy. Wars are wars and no amount of “statistics” makes them go away. And while that never polls highly in presidential elections outside of a major shooting war, it is another effective vector in which Harris is incredibly vulnerable.
When Trump peacefully walked out of office in January 2021, the world was at peace. There were no major wars, no allies were involved with wars. Even the North Korean nepo wackadoodle was playing peacefully in his own backyard of misery and despair. The world knew that America was strong and was not Obama-ing things with sweet nothings every dictator could ignore. (Putin, Assad, the Castros, the Mullahs, etc.)
Biden and Harris strolled into this peaceful world and in three years, there is now the largest European land war since World War II, with hundreds of thousands of Ukrianians and Russians killed or wounded, with millions displaced. Israel is under full attack on two fronts from Iranian proxies, and the entire Middle East is teetering on the brink of full-scale regional war. China is emboldened in its growing efforts to attack Taiwan. Venezuela was contained with tough sanctions but now is flaunting elections and threatening its neighbors with invasion. And North Korea has resumed firing off missiles toward South Korea and Japan.
The world is aflame and shifting to a complete realignment that greatly weakens America and the American dollar.
Smart American diplomacy had largely kept our major adversaries of China and Russia divided and untrusting of each other while India was trending closer and closer to America. All of that is now gone, also. Because of the disastrous handling of the Russian threat and then invasion of Ukraine, U.S.-led policy has forced Russia into China's arms, as the Chinese are buying gobs of Russian oil and economically trading with Moscow in ways that are strengthening the Russian economy even in the face of the Western sanctions.
The constant use of sanctions and leverage of the American dollar is making more countries wary of being solely aligned and dependent on the U.S., chief of these being India. The world’s most populated country is now in a de facto economic union with Russia and even China. And, of course, Iran slithers into that mix.
This is the world in less than four years of progressive Biden-Harris policies. What would another four, or heaven help us, eight years bring?
The blunt reality is that Harris’ progressivism has failed spectacularly in arena after arena, and nothing more clearly than the undeniable reality of a world on fire.
Rod Thomson is a former daily newspaper reporter and columnist, Salem radio host and ABC TV commentator, and current Founder of The Thomson Group, a Florida-based political consulting firm. He has eight children and seven grandchildren and a rapacious hunger to fight for America for them. Follow him on Twitter at @Rod_Thomson. Email him at [email protected].
