Five Sleeper Issues That Could Upend the 2024 Campaign

With the 2024 campaign season now in full swing, polling indicates that voters’ attention is centered primarily on two key policy areas: the economy and the border. But there are nonetheless a number of under-the-radar issues that could influence the election this fall.

Here are five sleeper issues that could potentially help define the final months of the 2024 campaign cycle.

Student Loan Forgiveness

As he faces historically high disapproval ratings and severe political backlash for his handling of the economy, border, and U.S. foreign policy, Biden has seemingly convinced himself that, in order to win the election, he needs to buy the youth vote by way of unconstitutional and ultra-expensive student loan bailouts that transfer that debt to American taxpayers.

After Biden’s illegal and highly unpopular 2022 executive action on student debt cancellation was shot down by the Supreme Court last summer, the White House has announced yet another plan to “forgive” an additional $6.1 billion in student loans—adding on to the hundreds of trillions of taxpayer dollars Biden has already spent on his far-reaching loan forgiveness programs.

According to the New York Post, Biden’s programs are already costing taxpayers a whopping $560 billion. But to make matters worse, the programs have primarily benefitted wealthy households earning more than $300,000 in annual income.

If Republicans make this a more prevalent campaign issue, it could be a big political winner.

Social Security and Medicare

Though Biden has repeatedly lied about Donald Trump’s stance on Social Security and Medicare in a desperate bid to keep the issue in his party’s political favor, the issue could come back to bite him.

As former National Economic Council director Larry Kudlow noted recently, Trump has been aggressively making the case on the campaign trail that a functioning nation cannot have both open borders and entitlement programs. “He basically said you can’t have entitlement programs that millions of people depend on and at the same time you let tens of millions of illegals into the country and give them more benefits,” Kudlow said. “Can’t be done. Trump is right.”

Kudlow was referring to a comment made by Trump during May 1 remarks in Wisconsin, in which the former president stated that Biden’s economic policies are “going to end up cutting Social Security by allowing millions and millions, which is not sustainable, of people coming into our country, through the southern border.” He continued: “And many, many really bad ones. Okay? Many, many bad ones. You’re going to destroy Social Security. You’re going to destroy Medicare. You’re going to destroy the fabric of the country. It’s not sustainable.”

As even CNN was recently forced to concede, entitlement programs are also being gutted by inflation—and that could cost Biden dearly at the ballot box. “Social Security isn’t keeping up with inflation,” their April 28 headline reads. “That could weaken Biden’s support among some seniors.”

This acknowledgment serves as simply the latest reminder that Biden’s economic and border policies are not only disastrous in and of themselves, but that they are even more disastrous when considered with their second-order effects. If Trump continues to hammer this point on the campaign trail, it may become a political anchor for Biden.

Cost of Housing

A largely underreported component of the Biden inflation crisis is the massive increase in the cost of housing and soaring mortgage rates.

Under Biden, thanks to high interest rates, the monthly mortgage payment on a median-priced home is now twice as much as it was when he took office. The 30-year mortgage rate, which sat at 2.6 percent when Trump left office, is nearing eight percent under Biden. And a record high of 22.4 million renter households are now considered cost-burdened.

As even the Biden-friendly economist Mark Zandi put it, purchasing a home in the Biden economy is “completely unaffordable for the typical American household.”

It’s no wonder the Biden camp sees the issue as a massive political liability.

But rather than finding ways to improve the economy, cut down on inflation, and create much-needed economic conditions for lower interest rates, Biden has instead opted to promote a bizarre “mortgage relief credit,” in which his administration is seeking to “provide a one-year tax credit of up to $10,000 to middle-class families who sell their starter home.”

While this initiative may seem appealing at first glance, given skyrocketing mortgage rates, a mere $10,000 will barely move the needle for struggling families—and is highly unlikely to induce many American families to forfeit their low-interest mortgages.

Ultimately, it remains doubtful that voters will be swayed by this obvious political ploy—creating yet another valuable political opening for Republicans this fall.

Democrats’ Appalling Record of Anti-Catholicism

Few issues in American politics have been as underplayed as the left’s shameful record of hostility toward the Catholic faith.

Perhaps most notably, a December 4 report from the House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government found, among other disturbing revelations, that the FBI “abused its counterterrorism tools to target Catholic Americans as potential domestic terrorists” when agency operatives in Richmond, Virginia, circulated a report designating so-called “radical-traditionalist Catholic[s]” (RTC) as potential “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists.”

According to the report, the FBI also “singled out Americans who are pro-life, pro-family, and support the biological basis for sex and gender distinction as potential domestic terrorists”—a stunning indication that the federal government is openly targeting Americans on the basis of their fidelity to the Catholic Church.

Additionally, in 2022, religious Americans were in shock when legions of armed FBI agents raided the home of Mark Houck, a Catholic pro-life activist, and father of seven, who was charged with violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act for praying the rosary outside of a Planned Parenthood clinic.

But this is only the beginning of the Biden administration’s anti-Catholic streak.

Democrats in the executive branch notably failed to invoke the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act to stop the onslaught of violent attacks against crisis pregnancy centers and Catholic parishes in the wake of the Supreme Court’s June 2022 Dobbs decision—even while they actively weaponize the law to target peaceful pro-life protesters outside abortion clinics.

Meanwhile, in a series of particularly tone-deaf moves, Biden commemorated a so-called “Transgender Day of Visibility” on Easter Sunday—a slap in the face to hundreds of millions of American Christians—and prohibited the use of religious imagery during the White House Easter Egg Roll.

Because Catholics make up a significant fraction of voters in the crucial Rust Belt swing states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania (in addition to Hispanic Catholics in the Sun Belt states), it would be of great benefit for the GOP to remind Catholic voters just how much the left despises them.

Title IX Overhaul and the Left’s Gender Ideology Crusade

Last month, the Biden administration stealthily issued a new series of Title IX regulations that, effective this August, will allow males who identify as transgender to enter women’s bathrooms and locker rooms, receive women’s scholarships, and live in women’s dorm rooms. The rules will also compel students and faculty to use the “preferred pronouns” of transgender-identifying individuals.

Specifically, the regulations prohibit discrimination on the basis of “gender identity”—obliterating any legal distinction between men and women and empowering transgender-identifying individuals to sue anyone for harassment if they dare to dissent.

Given that these rules are set to take effect on August 1—right as families will be preparing to send their children back to school for the start of the new academic year—Republicans have every reason to make the left’s sinister Title IX overhaul a major campaign issue as election season enters its final stretch. Right before Election Day, parents could very well come to learn that boys are sharing bathrooms with their daughters, which could lay the groundwork for a massive parental protest movement—not unlike the parental rights in education movement that propelled Governor Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) to the Virginia Governor’s Mansion in 2021.

In a Michigan speech, Donald Trump condemned the move as a “radical rewrite” of education rules that will “impose the most extreme left-wing gender ideology on every school in America.” Other Republicans on the ballot this fall would do well to echo that warning.

The border and the economy are certainly the top two issues. But there are a host of other opportunities for Republicans just beneath the surface.

Aaron Flanigan is the pen name of a writer in Washington, D.C.