Beliefs about Biden/Harris just aren’t true
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After reading David Lawson’s letter, “Maybe Trump’s Win Was about Policy,” I sympathize with Dr. Lawson’s desire to focus on policy. However, some of Dr. Lawson’s claims about the Biden/Harris administration’s policies are puzzling.
For instance, Dr. Lawson decries a Biden/Harris “border policy which allowed 11 million illegals to enter our country, some of which were gang members and criminals…” However, according to Pew Research, 11 million is an estimate of total undocumented immigrants in the country — including those who have been here for decades and those who arrived under Mr. Trump. It’s not the number arriving in the past four years.
Too, the New York Times reported on Nov. 3 that after an initial rise, the Biden administration has steadily reduced monthly numbers of immigrants. Factcheck.org agrees, citing the (libertarian) Cato Institute immigration scholar David Bier’s statement that the Biden administration “removed a higher percentage of arrested border crossers in its first two years than the Trump DHS … over its last two years. Moreover, migrants were more likely to be released after a border arrest under President Trump than under President Biden.”
Additionally, the National Institute of Justice reported on Sept. 12 that “undocumented immigrants are arrested at less than half the rate of native-born U.S. citizens for violent and drug crimes and a quarter the rate of native-born citizens for property crimes.” So Biden/Harris policies shouldn’t lose Harris an election based on either an unprecedented influx of people who are undocumented or a spike in violent immigrant crime — since neither one actually happened.
Mr. Lawson goes on to deride “inflation peaking at over 9%” in 2022 from “exorbitant government spending.” It’s true that inflation escalated during and after the pandemic. However, Forbes (not exactly a bastion of liberal media) reported on Nov. 1 that the 9% inflation rate of 2022 was reduced to about 3% by 2024, adding that “the federal government’s national debt of $35.8 trillion is 29% higher than the day Biden took office, after rising 39% during Trump’s presidency.” Also, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that Mr. Trump’s 2017 tax act, geared primarily to the wealthy, increased the deficit by almost two trillion dollars. If “exorbitant government spending” were the problem, Ms. Harris should’ve defeated Mr. Trump on the grounds of his more exorbitant spending.
Dr. Lawson goes on to complain of “policies” allowing transgender girls to compete in sports with and use bathrooms with cisgendered girls. I can’t find a single Biden/Harris policy legalizing either one. I did find proposed revisions to Title IX to “prohibit outright bans on transgender athletes, but … permit schools to restrict transgender students from participating if they could demonstrate that inclusion would harm ‘educational objectives’ like fair competition and the prevention of injury” — in other words, a compromise position, and also one never enacted. And a Gallup poll found that most voters ranked transgender issues as low priority compared to other concerns. So, again, it doesn’t seem like this non-policy should’ve led to a Harris loss … if it really was about policy.
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The rest of Dr. Lawson’s letter alleges, without any specific instances or evidence, that Biden administration polices are against hard work, fair trade and Constitutional law. He also blames “cultural elites,” whatever those are, even though Mr. Trump’s strongest base is among the rich — that is, actual elites. These positions are such sweeping, unsupported generalizations that it’s hard to know where to start.
But each specific “policy” that Dr. Lawson cites as a good reason for a Trump victory turns out not to be a Biden/Harris policy at all. And those alleged waves of violent crime by undocumented immigrants? Unheard of inflation? Transgender girls trouncing cisgender girls at sports? They aren’t actually happening, either. I can’t say definitively why Ms. Harris lost. But the policies Dr. Lawson cites, and the results he claims for them, don’t actually exist.
However, Dr. Lawson clearly believes that these are Biden/Harris policies — maybe because some media outlets have declared so loudly, and for so long, that they are. Maybe a belief in bad policy can (pardon me) trump actual policy.
And if so, then Harris advocates would have some right to be upset. Who wouldn’t be shocked if their candidate lost because people like Dr. Lawson blamed her for high crime rates that didn’t occur, numbers of immigrants who never arrived, youth sports crises that didn’t happen, and policies she never enacted?
(Catherine Carter lives in Cullowhee.)
