President Joe Biden is in a dogfight for reelection. Trailing in the polls to the inevitable GOP nominee, Donald Trump, Biden is licking his wounds and working to spin his spotty presidential record into a body of work that voters can endorse for four more years.

It's no easy task, given that Biden has several glaring vulnerabilities. Mental and physical fitness, for example. Or the economy. Or the border crisis.

The border crisis is especially pressing at the moment, and represents Biden’s most obvious political shift – a shift no doubt orchestrated to address the political ramifications of the crisis.

Joe Biden on the Border

When Biden first entered office in January 2021, he sent Congress “an immigration bill that included a pathway to citizenship for an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants,” The Washington Post reported.

The bill was meant to signal to Democrats that the incoming administration offered a tangible breach from the outgoing Trump administration, which had advocated for The Wall, and had once banned immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries.

Granted, Biden didn’t pivot away from Trump-era policies entirely; Biden dispatched his vice president, Kamala Harris, to Latin America with a message: “don’t come here.” And at the border, Title 42 remained in place, while families and children were still detained at the border, as they always had been, in the way that Democrats maligned Trump for.

But Biden did make an outward effort to shift away from the Trump era – in adherence to prevailing liberal wishes.

The shift was short-lived, however.

“Three years and more than 6 million border apprehensions later, Biden is advocating for a much different legislative proposal, one that leans squarely into border enforcement and excludes any pathway to citizenship,” The Post reported.

Actually, Biden is starting to sound like his predecessor, saying that he was ready to “shut down the border right now,” embracing the “toughest and fairest set of border reforms in decades.” Curiously, the left – who spent years citing Trump’s border policies as evidence of his inhumanity and draconian cruelty – don’t seem as concerned with Biden’s comparable border policies.

Quite the opposite: Biden is no doubt shifting his border policies because any perceived leniency at the border is coming to be viewed as a political vulnerability.

“Behind Biden’s shift, allies say, is a realization that immigration has become one of his greatest vulnerabilities – with images of chaos at the border that have hampered his presidency, weighed down his poll numbers and threatened to thwart his reelection bid,” The Post reported.

“It’s become this horrific issue that President Biden cannot just ignore – he’s got to deal with it,” Leon Panetta, former White House chief of staff, said. “Presidents are elected to deal with crisis. And I think, in many ways, his transformation on the issue has been largely the result of the growing crisis at the border.”

Surviving the Border

Biden had endorsed the border security bill that Republicans killed in the House yesterday. The bill would have blocked most migrants from seeking asylum in the US,  and may have given the president cover to defend his record on immigration policy.

But with the deal dead, Biden will have to defend a status quo that many Americans are uncomfortable with. And Trump, the most savage spin master in modern politics, will no doubt spend the months leading up to the presidential election telling the American public that ‘the border crisis is to be blamed on Open Borders Joe Biden, who reversed Trump’s common sense border policies’ – or something like that. And that could Joe Biden dearly. 

About the Author: Harrison Kass

Harrison Kass is a defense and national security writer with over 1,000 total pieces on issues involving global affairs. An attorney, pilot, guitarist, and minor pro hockey player, Harrison joined the US Air Force as a Pilot Trainee but was medically discharged. Harrison holds a BA from Lake Forest College, a JD from the University of Oregon, and an MA from New York University. Harrison listens to Dokken.

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