It's not immigrants. It's illegal immigrants. It was very clear from the beginning that this is what will kill the democrats chances. When you have poor people that have lived in this country since birth not be able to get help from the government because the government services in their community are over ran due to the influx of people. Who do you think they are going to vote for? Why do you think the Republicans had an historic election with minority voters?

All they had to do was actually do anything about the tens of millions of immigrants coming over the board, but they ignored it and Trump used it against them.

The Democrat party is ran by a bunch of idiots. Hopefully this is a wake up call for them to get with the real world on issues.

Calling someone Hitler when they clearly aren't is also not going to help people support you especially AFTER he was president before and they experienced a presidency under him lol.

This has happened and is happening in Europe, too.

Many people are coming in, some of them don't integrate and cause problems, the center says it's not a problem and the left says let's have more of them.

More people are coming in, problems are getting worse (both real and imaginary), people are getting upset, the right realizes they can use that and they build their whole agenda or that and win the elections.

The number of countries this has happened in increases, so non-right parties need to rethink their strategy if they want to stop losing.

Europe is able to change political course much more gradually: the EU is 27 countries, and the EU Parliament is elected with proportional voting systems which leads to coalitions and compromise.

A 10% increase in 'right' votes means roughly 10% more influence for the 'right' opinions.

In the USA, a tiny increase in 'right' votes means 100% more influence.

Europe is already rethinking it. Have you heard of Sahra Wagenknecht?

Europe is currently experiencing a hard shift to the right because progressives keep lying and downplaying bad economy policies and illegal immigration. Yet somehow each party has their own scapegoat.

"Tens of millions" "coming in over the border"? Mexico only even has 120m people in the first place. What, you think that half of their population walked into Texas and bought a house in Dallas?

> From 2014 to 2020, migrants from outside Mexico and Central America — known as “extra-continentals” — accounted for 19 percent of immigration court cases.

> In the last four years, those “extra-continentals” have risen to 53 percent of all court cases. They have arrived from countries such as India, China, Colombia and Mauritania.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/interactive/2024/...

Okay. Sure. Mexico only has 120m people. You think that a third of their population walked into Texas and bought a house in Dallas? A quarter? Hell, ten percent?

Fine. I'll bring some of my own statistics. There might be ten million undocumented immigrants living in the United States total. There are fewer than half a million illegal border crossings a year; if the expected lifespan following an illegal border crossing is, I don't know, forty years, then it's obvious that the overwhelming majority of illegal border crossings don't convert to undocumented immigrants. These numbers are easily available on the relevant Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_immigration_to_the_Uni..., which itself has extensive citations from a wide variety of sources. Saying that there are "tens of millions crossing the border" is clearly and blatantly incorrect.

And, of course, that's not even getting into the real meat of the issue, that's just sarcastically calling out the surface-level lies. No, what I really want to say about illegal immigration is that undocumented immigrants commit fewer crimes than either documented immigrants or outright citizens, that they pay more taxes than they cost in government spending, that they do not affect job access or pay of legal residents, that they prevent offshoring, and that they contribute to GDP via spending and labor. Undocumented immigrants are, as far as I can tell, purely positive contributors to America at every level I look at, for the people working alongside them and going to school with them all the way up to the grandest statistics. If we truly wanted a healthy economy - if we wanted more citizens to have better jobs, if we wanted more money for education and healthcare, if we wanted less crime and less exploitation of labor - we would legalize all of them and invite more in after them.

250k (recorded border patrol contacts) came across in December 2023 (peak), about 55k this last August. It is usually fewer then a million per year but still a significant number of people. Bad policies in 2023 led to an absolute flood. That is competition for American workers.

Still not "tens of millions", don't motte-and-bailey me.

Also, I thought competition was good and that we needed more of it. That's the usual fiscal-conservative line, right?

I'll further note that there are more job postings open right now than there have been at any time since 2000, that unemployment right now is incredibly low considering the pandemic and 2008, that the unemployment that still exists can be fairly easily traced to the previous trump presidency rather than any other cause, and that multiple detailed studies (refer to previous Wikipedia link) fail to find that illegal immigrants have any effect at all on the jobs or pay of American workers. Having more workers in total increases spending which opens up more jobs, for example, standard jevons paradox stuff. Your conclusions are not supported by any kind of evidence, your models do not describe or provide accurate predictions of reality, and your proposals will not work the way you think or claim they will.

Is it really competition? Do American workers get paid in cash from employers who don't ask for their Social Security number? Skilled jobs require documentation. Unskilled jobs require documentation. Working undocumented means being paid in cash by an employer who doesn't tell the IRS about you. Are citizens really lining up to work these jobs that undocumented immigrants perform? Food prices will increase again when all of the migrant farm workers are deported.

Most of the illegal migrants coming into the U.S are not from Mexico. They're from Latin American and Asia. Actual migration from Mexico by Mexican citizens has been on the decline in the past 10 years. Possibly due to Mexico's growing economy.

It’s not /only/ Mexicans crossing the border…

Even I, a Canadian, know that immigrants from all the way down to South America are streaming across the US border.

Ignoring the issue and calling everyone nazi or fascist is precisely why the democrats lost today. Hey, at least you have 4 years to learn your lesson

Calling out people who invoke Nazi themes doesn't make them more Nazi, nor does giving them a pass make them less so.

> ...are poisoning the blood of this country

Isn't that Nazi rhetoric? "Blood of the country" seems like exactly the sort of thing the Nazis would have been focused on. Are you going for irony?

> Are you going for irony?

Obviously yes: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/trump-says-im...

Congratulations on discovering the punchline.

Yes.

They're poisoning the blood of our country,” Trump told the crowd at a rally in New Hampshire.

"All great cultures of the past perished only because the originally creative race died out from blood poisoning," Hitler wrote.

Devil's advocate.. if Hilter once remarked that broccoli is good for you, would people throw that back at someone saying the same?

Hitler was vegetarian back when that was very unusual, and post-war the vegetarian movement in the UK was set back significantly as a result.

If Hitler then used that line to try and justify murdering millions of brussels sprout eaters, then yes. Otherwise you've missed the point by an almost impressive margin.

There is nothing inherently "Nazi" about being anti-illegal immigration. 30 years ago the left stood for a lot of anti immigration rhetoric.

Sure, but invoking Hitler's language while denigrating people from other countries is pretty Nazi though.

And when told that it sounded like something out of "Mein Kampf" Trump's response was that he had never read "Mein Kampf".

On the one hand, it's sort of believable that he would not engage with literature of any kind. On the other, he kept saying it after being informed that the phrase came from Hitler.

Yeah, it is astounding.

When any reasonable person says something that might seem close to something Hitler says and is told about it, their reaction is to figure out how to re-express what they said more clearly so that it cannot be mistaken for agreeing with Hitler.

Trump's reaction apparently is to want to make sure you know he didn't steal the idea from Hitler.

>Calling someone Hitler when they clearly aren't is also not going to help people support you especially AFTER he was president before and they experienced a presidency under him lol.

One bigly reason I voted for Trump was because his first term was by far the most peaceful both this country and the world at-large ever was in my lifetime.

For four years we didn't start or join any new wars, we even flat out refused to when the military industrial complex begged to Trump to start one with Iran after they shot down one of our drones. North Korea didn't fire a single missile and China wasn't anywhere as loud with their saber-rattling (I'm Japanese-American, I care deeply about Japanese security). Russia didn't invade Ukraine. Israel and Hamas/Hezbollah/et al. weren't brutally killing each other.

For four god damn years life was actually peaceful, and I want that again.

> North Korea didn't fire a single missile

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_North_Korean_missile...

> Russia didn't invade Ukraine

Russia invaded in 2014 and the conflict stabilized (but didn't stop) in 2015.

In the meantime, the Syrian civil war was raging on.

Similarly, if we ignore all the events in the prelude to WW2, the world was a very peaceful place. According to Hoover, Roosevelt was a threat to world peace, not Hitler.

I'm not implying anything with the analogy, I'm only trying to illustrate that the world was not peaceful between 2016 and 2020, despite the president's efforts.

Perhaps if we had gotten 2 consecutive terms, it might have provided more long term stability.

Er, Russia was already in Ukraine.

Warring Middle East nations signed more peace treaties under Trump than in any other time in modern history. Israel signed four peace treaties with Arab Nations under Trump.

if Biden will sign a decree to welcome everyone and every migrant would be legal, people still won't like it. people want to reduce immigration, legal or illegal.

[delayed]

Rephrased: we, the average tax payers, want prosperity too.

But you aren't getting any with this ticket. There is no political force in the US that would question the trickle-down fairytales, and your broken elections system won't allow one to emerge.

So you vote for change, yet the economics policies stay as unequal as always. But in the process you supported a rapist and a criminal who calls execution of journalists, suppression of women, blatant racism and just death and destruction of non-privileged people everywhere.

if the genuinely unprivileged gain some consciousness of their condition because of Trump, there will be changed. You cannot claim it for them.

So, accelerationism?

accelerationism would be launching yourself into the unknown and not committing to a particular political ideology except the continuous development of capitalism. This is simply working with the concrete situation: a Trump presidency, which clearly opens up more opportunities for radical action then a Harris presidency, since Trump will be too busy completely destroying the economy and the FBI, CIA, and NSA, the judiciary and the legal system more broadly, to be even capable of fighting back against resistance or even stopping the conditions for a popular foment. Or, maybe I'm wrong, who knows. But at least now we'll get to know.

That's what's the most mind-boggling for me - since when are the Republicans the ones considered most likely to bring prosperity to the masses?

Since they don't promote politics that keep salaries low, inflate housing prices, increase external spending or drive criminality.

You may want to give Republican policies a quick double check.

Can you give an example of such a policy?

(Not to doubt it, I just don't know as I'm on the other side of the world.)

Illegal immigration disregard, feeding stupid wars, ignoring petty crime.

Republicans started the war in Iraq and Afghanistan so that's not true.

And Republicans are against increasing the federal minimum wage so that's also not true.

Disinformation is what won this campaign.

Notably those wars were not started or escalated by Trump's republican party. While >Dick Cheney< got accepted by Dems now just because he is against Trump...

I see that we're already moving goalposts.

Trump has a responsibility in escalating the tension between Israel and Palestine following the move of the American embassy to Jerusalem.

He also escalated bombings in Syria.

His terrible Afghan deal also made it so that there was no time or guarantees to fly Americans and people that helped America to the US while also leaving a lot of American military gear to the Talibans. This also ridiculed the US on the international stage.

Considering it seems Arab American voters were willing to punish kamala or even outright vote trump on account of the current administrations stance on IvP since then, it seems they are willing to look past the embassy issue for a bigger issue - the current state of affairs.

Considering how the Obama administration handled Iraq and Afghanistan, I doubt they would have acted any differently wrt Syria.

Alas if I recall Trump managed to have ultimate responsibility for that fiasco occur under Biden's watch on account of losing the 2020 election. Whoops.

> Alas if I recall Trump managed to have ultimate responsibility for that fiasco occur under Biden's watch on account of losing the 2020 election. Whoops.

Yes, he was completely out negotiated by terrorists and his successor had to clean up the gigantic pile of poop that leaked from Trumps diaper.

Not much Biden could have done about this.

Well, so long as prosperity doesn't mean cheaper TVs with Chinese parts in them. I guess they will have to buy American TVs from now on.

I’ve seen more than a few comments and tips on HN about how to keep one’s TV from phoning China.

> the message is: we don't want immigrants

It wasn't the case last time with Melania. And it won't be the case this time with Musk.

> we don't want to help other countries at our short term cost (even if it is a long term gain for us)

It is not even that since what they basically propose is to dial down the war in Eastern Europe but get more involved in the war in Middle East and possibly soon in East Asia. That stance always seemed very confusing to me as a non-US person.

> That stance always seemed very confusing to me as a non-US person.

Europeans seem to overestimate how close America is to Europe.

If you live in the Western half of the United States, Asia is much closer than Eastern Europe, most US military deployments are in the Pacific, and most foreign trade the US has is with Asia.

Both parties campaigned on leaving the Middle East, but it is difficult to disengage from the region without devolving power to a regional ally (similar to how the US historically let France take the reigns on African relations). Historically, that ally has been Israel and Turkiye, but relations between the US and them have fallen precipitously.

it's actually really interesting, Trump already modified his rhetoric. In the rallies in the last week and in his acceptance speech he has suddenly talked about how they want immigrants to come in legally - even went out of his way to talk about "geninuses" in the acceptance speech. Pretty clear here that people like Musk have been heavily exerting influence to shape his viewpoint towards favouring immigration that allows high skilled workers in.

> we don't want to help other countries at our short term cost (even if it is a long term gain for us)

More like stop trying so hard to bring us closer to a WWIII. The USA's current foreign policy is the main cause of all the turmoil we're seeing in eastern Europe and the Middle East. Anything that can change it should be welcomed by anyone with a desire to live.

The game theoretic irony is that peace can often only be achieved by building up the military strength to deter potential attackers. There are a few places in the world where US involvement can lead tonkore stability.

Faltering US support for the Ukraine will tempt Russia into more territorial expansion towards or even into NATO.

China will probably ramp up aggression against Taiwan and against the Philippines. It is a minor miracle that no lethal shots have yet been fired in the persistent and aggressive military incursions into Philippines territorial waters. Several navy vessels have already been damaged this year.

I believe that the best way to release tensions in the Middle East would be by improving relations with Iran - but Trump bombed the deal that would have enabled that. The relqtive economic stength of the US could have been a good motivatir. Now Iran is aligning itself with Russia.

> The game theoretic irony is that peace can often only be achieved by building up the military strength to deter potential attackers.

Nobody has attacked the USA since Pearl Harbor. Military strength has been used to impose hegemony over other parts of the world, not to protect the nation.

> There are a few places in the world where US involvement can lead tonkore stability.

How can you say that after the countless deaths, pain, and strife caused by the USA in the Middle East, Asia, and South America?

> Nobody has attacked the USA since Pearl Harbor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks

Seems big to leave out especially since your next remark is about strife caused by the USA in the Middle East...

You mean the terrorist attack orchestrated by the same guy (Osama Bin Laden) the USA propped up in the 80s when he was fighting against the Soviets in Afghanistan?

The 11 September is the perfect example of the USA bringing instability to the world and giving life to future enemies through their reckless interference in the Middle East.

You keep mentioning things done by republican administrations as a defense.... of a republican president?

> Military strength has been used to impose hegemony over other parts of the world, not to protect the nation.

I'm not a scholar of military history. I assumed that no one would dare attack the US because the US military is larger than the next ~dozen militaries combined?

>The game theoretic irony is that peace can often only be achieved by building up the military strength to deter potential attackers.

But the utility of military build up is non-linear. There comes a point where further gains for your side are marginal while further losses for your adversary are existential. A neutral Ukraine represented a sufficiently balanced state of power that rendered war negative sum for Russia. We overextended ourselves in trying to peal Ukraine away from Russia's orbit. NATO in Ukraine would have been a strategic noose from which Russia would never escape. The Ukraine war is blowback for American policy towards Russia, i.e. expand NATO up to Russia's border, bait Ukraine and Georgia for NATO membership, foment anti-Russian movements in Ukraine that lead to the expulsion of the Russian-friendly president of Ukraine and install someone western-oriented.

> NATO in Ukraine would have been a strategic noose from which Russia would never escape.

Reminder: Ukraine was (strongly) against NATO membership before Russia invaded in 2014.

NATO threat is a red herring that Russia likes to dangle in front of the western countries to cover up its expansionist agenda. The only reason it's "afraid" of NATO is NATO can make that agenda much harder to pull off.