Listen to Their Stories

Dan Proft Commentary

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…The Kiffness synthpop ditty making the rounds is good, clean Howard Jones era fun indicative of a decidedly sober matter. Trump and the GOP need to fully transition away from the former and to the latter.

The firestorm generated by the household pet proxy for open borders doesn’t make the issue silly or a distraction, as per the conventional pundits. The memes Trump and Vance spawned and the cable news food fights they instigated got people’s attention. Now is the time to pivot and frame the issue.

Why are Biden and Harris drop-shipping thousands of migrants to communities with little notice and no resources to accommodate the influx of people?

How can one rationally conclude anything other than Biden and Harris have no regard for the quality of life and the safety of American families in these communities?

Success in electoral politics requires defining a constituency so they know you are on their side of the skirmish line. A good way to accomplish that is with real-world archetypes.

A mother of five from Fairhope, Alabama, is just such a person for Trump. Fairhope is dealing with the prospect of an influx of migrants just like Springfield, Ohio, and Whitewater, Wisconsin, and Charleroi, Pennsylvania, and so many other communities.

She spoke at a local council meeting on behalf of her mother-in-law who was killed in a car accident in the Grand Rapids, Michigan, area by a Haitian man driving recklessly. Was he in this country illegally? We don’t know as neither the media nor the powers that be in so many states and localities are keen on making such distinctions.

After the background on her family’s loss, this mom nicely encapsulated the legitimate grievances people have about what is being done to them, giving lie to the caricatures advanced by those self-styled reservoirs of empathy and compassion…

.. If only Trump would relentlessly speak in such a measured and heartfelt way about the stakes on the table.

Speaking of Springfield, Ohio, and empathy, but the genuine variety, this mom, who also lost her mother-in-law to a traffic accident involving a Haitian migrant allegedly driving recklessly, is another representative of the people who play by the rules in America, Trump’s constituency…

…These ladies and so many other families like them do not need to be platformed at a Trump rally. In fact, it would be better if they weren’t. They didn’t step to the podiums at their respective town board meetings as partisans and better to keep it that way.

The Trump campaign’s job is to leverage its communication channels to widely distribute and drive their stories.

JD Vance should introduce one or both and or others on Tuesday night in his square off with Field Marshal Tim who will undoubtedly try to marginalize the issue by carrying on about the allegations of missing pets.

The heroes of these stories are the Americans who were wronged, horrifically so, but remain nonetheless focused on making things right for their families and communities. These are the people who will make America great again. And they deserve a government that will back their play rather than stab them in the back.

“Say Their Names” was the mantra of the Black Lives Matter movement when it was pushing defunding the police. It was good marketing for terrible policy because it drew people’s attention to those who had been killed without any concern for whether police were in the right or wrong.

For Trump and Vance, the imperative is to “Listen to Their Stories.”

By contrast to BLM, the details and the delineation between right and wrong are critical. For the last five weeks of the campaign, the more profile given to Americans speaking on their own volition in their own voice about their values and the value of the place they call home, the better the chance we have to save their homes and America in the process.