A man in a dark suit and red tie talking to an older woman with gray hair, seated at a table with wine glasses and a small bouquet of red flowers. People are mingling in the background with patriotic decorations and American flags.

Jim Desmond

Republican Frontrunner

This candidate presents themselves as pragmatic and “common-sense,” but their platform largely repackages conservative, corporate-friendly policies in softer language. They prioritize enforcement, deregulation, and market-based solutions while avoiding structural reforms that would actually lower costs or expand rights for working people.

Across immigration, housing, climate, and economic policy, the throughline is clear: protect existing power structures, shift responsibility onto individuals, and frame austerity and enforcement as “balance” and “fairness.” The result is a platform that sounds reasonable on the surface but offers little in the way of real change for working families. Below are brief critiques on each of his planks.

    • Frames migration as a security problem rather than a humanitarian and labor issue; the result is more enforcement, not more legal pathways or worker protections.

    • Requiring asylum claims at embassies effectively bars people fleeing immediate danger and turns our duty to protect into a bureaucratic obstacles.

    • Saying we need “More tools for Border Patrol” reads like a budget request for militarization, not a plan to reduce exploitation or employer-driven migration.

    • Emphasizing enforcement over employer accountability lets industries outsource labor costs while communities and migrants pay the price.

    • Blames individuals for a system that deliberately keeps legal routes tiny and slow; it punishes people instead of expanding visas or humane processing.

    • Shields the status quo that benefits employers and recruiters who profit from temporary, precarious labor.

    • Spins climate action as a burden on households while defending the expansion of fossil fuels and costly techno-fixes that mainly protect industry profits.

    • Opposes direct investments that actually lower bills for working people — like weatherization, public transit, and community renewables — in favor of vague “choice” rhetoric.

    • “Lower taxes and fewer regulations” is a cover for handouts to the rich and corporations, not a credible plan to make life affordable for families.

    • Real affordability requires public investment, taxing the rich, tenant protections, and anti-monopoly action — none of which are on this platform.

    • Offers policing, forced treatment, and short-term triage while avoiding the one thing that works at scale: deeply funded public housing and tenant protections.

    • Ties federal dollars to vague “results” without committing to the structural investments that actually prevent homelessness in the first place.

    • Pledges to “protect farmers” while opposing the policies that would stabilize costs and support small producers — like price supports, anti-consolidation rules, allowing farmers to own their own seeds or even just supporting a “right to repair”, so farmers can repair their own equipment.

    • Prioritizes cheap fuel and corporate-friendly measures over resilient local food systems and fair labor.

    • Packages skills training as a recruitment funnel rather than guaranteeing non-military, civilian pathways with union jobs and placement guarantees.

    • Treats public education and workforce development as optional extras instead of publicly funded rights.

    • Polished rhetoric masks a consistent pattern: enforcement and corporate-friendly fixes instead of public investment, worker power, and humane solutions.

    • If you want real reform, don’t take their slogans — demand policies that expand legal pathways, build housing, lower costs, and shift power away from profiteers. If trickle down economics actually worked, $80 Trillion in wealth would have never been “transferred” from the bottom 90% of Americans to the top 10% over the past 50 years. Nor would we have 60% of Americans living paycheck to paycheck. If you ask Jim about it, he would tell you to work harder, and to “pick yourself up by your bootstraps”. He did it, so why can’t you?