Trump is a trainwreck, but Americans look at the border and think Biden is worse

We have never had a major-party candidate in U.S. history haul this much baggage into a presidential race.

As the calendar flips to 2024, you would expect Donald Trump to limp into the Republican primary with two impeachments and four indictments.

He brings a long-established reputation as a womanizer, demagogue and serial liar to the campaign.

He is broadly held responsible for the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and is routinely mocked for his conspiracies about the stolen 2020 election.

The opposition party and opposition media already deride him with damning words. They call him “Hitler,” “The next Hitler,” and “Worse than Hitler.”

Trump is emboldened, more powerful

And now the Colorado Supreme Court, all appointed by Democrats, have ruled him ineligible for that state’s primary ballot.

But Trump is not limping.

He’s striding into 2024, crushing the Republican field in national and most state polls and beating Joe Biden by a Real Clear Politics average of nearly 3 points.

Less than a setback, the Colorado decision has emboldened Trump and ignited his fundraising.

When you are the Democrats and you are losing to someone you regard as worse than Hitler, you can start to sound as impetuous as former Obama adviser David Axelrod.

“If America chooses a president who approvingly quotes the murderous Putin, recycles Hitler’s hateful libel against the Jews to slime immigrants and hails the likes of Kim Jung-Un, sad to say, America will get the president it deserves.”

Got that America? This is on you.

That's an indictment of Democrats

But what does it say about modern Democrats that they are losing to the most damaged candidate in the 247-year history of our republic?

That they are held in lower regard than the man they say is going to destroy our democracy.

Here’s what it tells us.

“Everything’s gone to s---.”

So says Jaime Tacuba to Politico.

That’s not MAGA talking, but the Latino people of El Paso — a Democratic stronghold that is 80% Hispanic in a Texas county where Biden beat Trump by 35 points in 2020.

El Paso Latinos are turning to Trump

When Politico editor David Siders went there recently, he came back with this headline:

“There are a lot of Mexican people looking forward to Trump.”

That headline itself is actually a quote from Roy Rosales, an El Paso executive chef who was born across the river, in Juárez, Mexico. Siders found him at the El Paso WinterFest eating popcorn with hot sauce.

“Trump, he started rough,” Rosales said. “But now that you see it, when Biden came in, he messed everything up.”

“I want Trump back,” said Daniela Simental, who immigrated to the U.S. from Mexico when she was 12. She didn’t vote for Trump in 2016, but she’s having second thoughts now, according to Siders’ report.

What’s happening in El Paso?

A chaotic border is speaking to voters

The border has become a gusher of illegal immigration, with record numbers pouring into the United States, not just from Latin America, but from China, Haiti, the Middle East.

The Biden White House has so badly botched immigration that is trying the patience of the most immigrant-friendly country in the world.

Customs and Border Patrol are outnumbered and understaffed, forcing the feds to shut down U.S.-Mexico rail crossings at El Paso and Eagle Pass, Texas, and shift manpower from there to process border crossers.

Trips to Phoenix used to take 4 hours: Now they take 8

For Democrats, this is trouble on the horizon.

“Every day the crossings are closed, almost 4,500 rail cars are delayed, which has ripple effects across the network,” Transport Topics reports.

“The urgency of reopening these crossings and restoring rail service between the two nations cannot be overstated,” said Ian Jefferies, president of the Association of American Railroads.

Democrats can't perform a basic function

But Customs and Border Patrol can barely keep up with record breaking migrant traffic.

Illegal border crossings are now topping 10,000 people a day, Troy Miller, U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s acting commissioner, told the Associated Press.

For the first time, illegal crossings have exceeded 2 million in successive budget years, AP reports.

And all as the nature of immigration is changing, reports AP:

“Senegalese people accounted for more than 9,000 arrests in Tucson from Oct. 1 to Dec. 9, while arrests of people from Guinea and India each topped 4,000. Agents have encountered migrants from about four dozen Eastern hemisphere countries.”

Aerial shots of people pouring into the country at El Paso and Eagle Pass are daily reminders that Democrats cannot perform a basic function of governance — they cannot protect the border.

No wonder so many are fed up with Biden

Consequently, in the RealClearPolitics average of polls, Americans disapprove of Joe Biden’s management of immigration by more than 30 points.

There are other reasons for that. Inflation has been a grind, and Joe Biden is looking older by the day.

As Democrats run through the litany of proper nouns they now call Trump — “Hitler,” “Mussolini” and “Stalin,” it turns out the American people are unmoved.

They seem preoccupied with a scarier proper noun — “Biden.”

I’d like Democrats to take a moment and explain that.

Phil Boas is an editorial columnist at The Arizona Republic. Email him at phil.boas@arizonarepublic.com.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Trump is bad, but voters think Biden's border is worse