Welcome to the political Thunderdome. The 2024 US election will be a gladiatorial battle between two ageing prize fighters who are determined to keep taking swings at each other. With Super Tuesday over and Joe Biden’s televised State of the Union address tomorrow, the contest is entering its fateful mano-a-mano stage. Trump has the manic energy and white-knuckle fury over losing the last election to come roaring back into the ring, while vanity, unquenched ambition and a misplaced saviour complex are propping up Joe Biden in the other corner well beyond his natural sell-by date.
For the moment it looks like advantage Trump. At Mar-a-Lago, he entered the ballroom with a fist pump last night, while Biden, presumably, was tucked up in bed. “They call it Super Tuesday for a reason. This is a big one,” Trump crowed. “They tell me, the pundits and otherwise, that there has never been one like this, never been anything so conclusive.”
Trump beat Nikki Haley, his only Republican challenger and reportedly quitting the race today, in 15 primary states from California to Massachusetts. Tiny liberal Vermont, home of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, was the site of her only victory. He trounced Haley among men, women (to a lesser extent) and minority voters. A CNN exit poll in North Carolina and Virginia found more than six out of 10 Republican voters didn’t give a fig whether Trump was convicted of a crime or not. They still think he is fit to be elected. A similar number felt Biden was not legitimately elected.
It is often said the fight will be between two “incumbents” since each candidate will have served four years as president. This is not quite right. Trump has regained the insurgent, outsider status that served him so well in 2016. He is also leading Biden in all the major polls, which was emphatically not the case in 2016 or 2020. A Siena/New York Times poll showing Trump five points ahead of Biden at 48 per cent to 43 per cent had Democrats downcast last weekend. But Biden also cruised through the Democratic primaries last night, despite a substantial “uncommitted” protest vote in Minnesota over Gaza. So it’s settled then. Short of an act of God, we are stuck with them.
Biden can brag about the best economy in the West but most will watch to see if he fumbles the autocue
If you are not with the programme, tough luck. Biden’s biographer, Evan Osnos, claimed this week the 81-year-old president was displaying “an ostentatious level of serenity” about his chances of winning a second term in office. “If you spend time with Biden these days, the biggest surprise is that he betrays no doubts,” Osnos wrote in The New Yorker. So that’s all right then. But sane Democrats who are not working for Biden inside the White House bubble are quaking at keeping his candidacy alive beyond the point of no return. They fear a re-run of the complacent Hillary Clinton campaign.
As for Trump, he has completely taken over the Republican party. It is now a fully fledged family business, soon to be run by Lara Trump, his daughter-in-law, as the emerging co-chair of the Republican National Committee. “There is nobody more loyal to Donald Trump and the Make America Great Again movement than this person you are looking at. Me,” Lara boasted yesterday. “Anyone who is not on board with seeing Donald Trump as the president… is welcome to leave.”
Goodbye, big tent. Hello, Trump cult, though it has a terrifyingly large membership. In future, much of the RNC’s fundraising efforts will likely be diverted towards paying the dear leader’s astronomical legal fees. Unless, that is, that equally cultish figure Elon Musk (net worth circa $200 billion) steps into the breach. He went to see Trump at Mar-a-Lago in Florida last weekend and could solve the former president’s liquidity problems at a stroke. Owning X (Twitter) not only provides Musk with a political bullhorn, his status as the ultimate tech bro is regarded by Trumpists as a key to persuading young male admirers to vote MAGA. Young women, in contrast, are heading in the other direction towards Biden.
There are some pockets of resistance to Trump, which Super Tuesday illuminated. These are mainly clustered around female, suburban, college-educated voters who used to vote Republican but can’t stomach it. Some backed Nikki Haley yesterday, such as Alyson Emanuel in North Carolina. Asked if Haley had a shot at victory, she replied: “No. And you know what? I don’t care.” She just wanted to register her distaste for the former president.
We don’t know yet whether Haley will reluctantly endorse Trump. By the time the MAGA disinformation machine had finished with her, most Trumpists were convinced she was little more than a “Democratic plant”, as senior adviser Jason Miller put it cruelly yesterday. But if she folds, she will effectively be giving permission to her supporters to do the same. That’s a big prize for Trump. Those who can’t accommodate their consciences are quitting the field, such as Colorado congressman Ken Buck, who announced this week he won’t be standing for re-election. “I’m not going to lie on behalf of my presidential candidate,” he said.
The Biden campaign has only a small window of opportunity to win over Haley voters. But tomorrow’s annual State of the Union address is probably not the best place to do it. Bringing Yulia Navalnya, the widow of the Russian dissident Alexei Navalny, to Congress is a bravura act of political theatre, which will cause some Republican congressmen to blush over withholding $61 billion for Ukraine, but most won’t care. Biden will also claim bragging rights over bringing unemployment down below four per cent, reducing inflation to three per cent, having a soaraway stock market and the best economy in the West. But most TV viewers and consumers of social media will be watching to see whether he fumbles his autocue at the podium.
As David Axelrod, Obama’s former communications chief, said, “He’s done a hell of a job, but he is not a particularly competent performer in front of the cameras and that’s how people interact with the president.”
For Democrats, there remains the hope that a majority of Americans will not succumb to Trump Redux. Rob Reiner, director of the cult film classic, This is Spinal Tap, tweeted yesterday: “I refuse to believe Americans would rather have a lying lunatic rapist who... will destroy our Democracy than a decent man who’s spent his life fighting to make things better... I have faith. We will do the right thing and vote for Joe Biden.”
If you say so, Rob. The rest of the world is holding its breath.
