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Notes -
Was it?
There's no way that he can actually compete with Trump for the "no more illegal immigration" vote, and it is just going to hurt his numbers and dampen enthusiasm with his actual base. Furthermore, the manner in which he did it isn't going to convince anyone in the moderate camp - that claim will only last as long as it takes for someone to pull out a smartphone and google what he actually did.
Cross pressured voters are real. Someone out there might think "Trump's tariffs are going to be disastrous and wreck the economy, but this border situation is such a mess, we can't keep doing this." If Biden can make the border seem like not such an urgent problem, that voter then gets freed up to vote on the basis of tariffs.
While I can actually agree with that, I think that such people are a very small minority - and I also don't think he closed the border in any way that matters. The situation is still a mess, and Biden can't even begin to offer a real answer because his donors and political cohort want to make sure that the problem stays a big problem (because that big problem is incredibly profitable for them).
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