“First you win the argument, then you win the vote.” President Joe Biden and Democratic leaders have ignored this advice from Margaret Thatcher to their own detriment. Democrats, aided by former President Donald Trump’s denigration of Georgia’s electoral system, were gifted by voters with the narrowest of legislative majorities, 51-50 in the Senate and 220-212 (with three vacancies currently) in the House. Biden himself won the crucial three swing states by a combined total of just 42,918 popular votes.

Incautiously, Democrats plunged into policymaking without making anything like cognizable policy arguments. Trump had reduced illegal immigration by extending walls on the Mexican border and persuading Mexico’s president to hold asylum-seekers in Mexico until their (usually baseless) claims could be ruled on. Both policies were ditched on day one of the Biden administration. The policy argument: “Orange Man Bad.”