It is a mark of the bleakness of expectations among American Democrats that, this week, President Biden’s slight rise in the polls has been seized on as cause for giddiness. I did it myself. This was it! The beginning of the correction. Finally, the toll of various lawsuits and expensive judgments was coming home to roost in the form of a drag on Donald Trump’s popularity. New York magazine urged cautious optimism. NBC News lost its mind and used the word “behemoth” in a headline to toast Biden’s burgeoning campaign. All this based on national polling that puts Trump 0.7% ahead.
Still, it’s better than the numbers were a few months ago. In Pennsylvania, a key battleground that flipped for Trump in 2016, a recent survey put Biden up 10 points, having led by only one in February. In a national poll conducted by NPR, Biden was actually two points ahead. (The same poll found that 40% of respondents reported being “open to changing their minds”. Who are these people and what is wrong with them?) But while older voters, particularly men, seemed to be moving en masse towards Biden, voters under 45 appeared less sure. Many young people still endorse Biden, but Trump, up a net 15 points in that demographic since 2020, is seemingly gaining ground with younger Americans.
Of course, it’s possible that none of this means anything. A two-point lead is too narrow to predict an outcome. It does, however, fit with a sense that things look very different now to the way they did in 2020. In February, the Biden campaign raised $53m in donations, and has built a significant fundraising advantage over Trump. The former Republican president has seemed less visible – or more accurately, less audible – than he did at this point in the run up to the election four years ago. Some of this may be down to a sharpened ability on the part of the electorate simply to screen the man out. But there is a sense, also, of Trump’s attention residing elsewhere. While no individual legal judgment against him appears, ever, to discourage his supporters, Trump’s endless legal wrangles do at least seem to be making demands on his time.
Next week, Trump will become the first former US president to face criminal proceedings, with the start of the so-called hush-money trial featuring Stormy Daniels. This is among the weaker of the cases against him, turning as it does on esoteric campaign finance rules that are unlikely to move voters. If anything, the burlesque quality of the episode is perfectly suited to Trump’s ability to spin negative coverage into a joke that delights his supporters; expect the word “porn star” to do a lot of heavy lifting.
But there is bigger trouble ahead. Hanging over Trump is the recent $454m judgment against him in the civil fraud case brought by the New York attorney general, Letitia James, for which, in March, he was scheduled to pay a $175m bond. In the event, James questioned the paperwork provided by Trump’s insurance company, Knight Specialty Insurance, citing insufficient evidence of funds. A judge will hold a hearing on the probity of Trump’s bond payment on 22 April. If the bond is found inadequate, his assets may be seized.
To list Biden’s successes against these liabilities of Trump’s as if the comparison falls within a regular framework is an exercise that plunges us back into the realm of the surreal. The US economy is strengthening, Biden’s student loan forgiveness scheme has affected millions of lives and job growth has continued for a record 39 months. Meanwhile, last month, Trump predicted a “bloodbath for the country” if he lost the election, a word he repeated in a speech in Grand Rapids, Michigan last week.
The difference this time is that we’ve heard it all before. In the spring of 2020, reporters were going to Trump rallies and sending back dispatches as if from the moon. Trump voters were given thousands of words to describe their predicaments and grudges. The normalisation of Trump has been largely a bad thing. But if the wild novelty of his campaign – the sheer entertainment value, to some, of his disruptive presidency – accounted for a good proportion of his success at the last election, we may hope, without getting too giddy, that this will be much less of a factor in November.
Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist
