Donald Trump and Joe Biden, with their respective circumstances – an attempted attack and a live political agony – have blown all certainty out of the water this week. Like the two sides of a coin tossed in the air, the martyrdom and the subsequent apotheosis of the Republican and the, for some, hasty burial of the Democrat – after suggesting that he would step aside if there were a medical reason – have been counter-programmed in an audience challenge: the more clamorous the Trumpist emotional explosion, the deeper the fall of the latter, a political implosion that, for many Democrats, could take their party with it if the president insists, as he said again this Friday, on continuing in the race for the White House.
After the attempted assassination of Trump at a rally in Butler (Pennsylvania), nothing seems to overshadow his baraka, the same fortune that in recent months has allowed him to wade through, with the help of the Supreme Court, his many judicial fronts despite the criminal conviction for the Stormy Daniels caseAs controversial host Tucker Carlson noted Thursday on the final day of the Republican convention, the assassination attempt “transformed” Trump, giving him a semi-divine aura that has unleashed an electrifying wave of support.
At the antipodes of the hero, more than ever mortal and decrepit flesh, is Biden’s apparent inability as a candidate for reelection after his disastrous role in the debate with Trump on June 27, which increased this week when, after having assured that only the Almighty could remove him from the race, he left the door open to a withdrawal for medical reasons and, hours later, it was announced that he had Covid. The staging of the withdrawal – he isolated himself in his house in Delaware, unlike previous infections, which he spent in the White House – seemed planned to the millimeter, after relevant leaders of the party, such as Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi, insisted that he step aside.
The former House speaker privately told Biden (81) that polls show he can’t beat Trump (78) and that he could ruin Democrats’ chances of winning the House in November if he continues to seek a second term, according to four sources briefed on the call. Some media outlets, such as the portal Axiosthey even set a date for the official announcement of the resignation, this weekend. Pelosi would prefer an open nomination process for Biden’s replacement, rather than the succession automatic by Kamala Harris.
So this campaign, four months before the elections, has exchanged the usual fireworks of proclamations and promises for the vertigo of a roller coaster. Or at least for the jolts of a bumper car track where the news comes in fits and starts. The abysmal gap between the two candidates only seemed to narrow after the failed attack, when both called for unity and moderation. But each interpreted them in their own way, and not precisely as an invitation to concord or national consensus. Trump, in an internal key: his call for unity was actually an appeal to the obedience of his people, for everyone, including his rivals in the primaries Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis, to pay him homage: there is nothing that pleases Trump more than public praise, as demonstrated by the fact that the most repeated word in the speeches of the speakers was his last name. The effort to tone down the tension was a dribble in the area, before firing back with his bellicose rhetoric. Biden’s contrition and moderation did not last long, and despite showing remorse for having said during the campaign, a few days before the shooting, that Trump had to be put “in the crosshairs” – the Republicans accused the Democrats of instigating the attack with that phrase – he immediately attacked his opponent in a defiant manner: he regretted having used the word “bull’s-eye”, he said, but not the meaning of the phrase.
The presidential race is at a crucial moment. Trump crowned, undefeated even despite the condemnation of New York, a miraculous survivor, a sudden martyr without rivals. The absolute monarch of what was once the GOP (Grand Old Party, the Republican Party) and today is the MAGA movement (the acronym for the Republican Party). Make America Great Again), without reprobates or heterodox, only faithful. President Biden, giving a little of lime and a little of sand, showing himself to be obstinate and at the same time vulnerable, exactly the opposite of the display of strength – and testosterone – that on Thursday, on the final day of the Republican convention in Milwaukee, three speakers from the world of boxing and wrestling gave to praise Trump. Not even the best scriptwriter could have emphasized more the strength of the Republican in front of the tired Biden, despite the fact that only three years separate them.
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The Democrat has tried to prove his suitability by increasing his rallies and interviews. But the boasting has not reassured Democrats, but rather the opposite. “Anyone who thinks this is over is wrong,” said one House Democrat, speaking on condition of anonymity, of his candidacy. “He is being receptive. Not as defiant as he is in public. He has gone from saying, ‘Kamala can’t win,’ to ‘Do you think Kamala can win? ’” he said. “It’s not yet clear where he’s going to land, but he seems to be listening.” The threat of blocking funding from major donors also weighs heavily on the party, especially if a Plan B has to be implemented.
The bitter war between Republicans and Democrats – or rather, Democrats against Republicans, as well as among themselves – shows no signs of letting up. The Trump campaign has halted the decision on the usual debate between the vice-presidential candidates on Wednesday and claims impartiality with “whoever Kamala Harris chooses”, assuming that Biden will throw in the towel and the vice president will automatically replace him. “We don’t know who the Democratic vice-presidential candidate will be,” said Brian Hughes, senior adviser to the campaign, which is why “we can’t set a date before their convention,” which begins on August 19 in Chicago. A most underhanded way of putting more obstacles in Biden’s way by choosing his successor: because the Republicans are betting on Harris, and they don’t want to hear about the possibility that Michelle Obama, very reluctant to take the step, could run.
While Trump has everything wrapped up and well tied up — nothing went wrong at the convention, and nothing, except for unforeseen events such as the failed attack, should worry him until November — Biden is in overtime. His allies have quietly pressured the Democratic National Committee to speed up the virtual nomination process for the candidate, in the hope of voting next week and definitively closing the debate before the convention in Chicago. Others, such as the influential senator Chuck Schumer and the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, bought time by convincing the committee not to bring forward the deadlines. Voting will not begin before August 1.
Isolation of the democrat
Biden isolated himself at his Delaware beach house after returning from a trip to Las Vegas on Wednesday night, having cut short his visit because he tested positive for the coronavirus. Democratic criticism of his candidacy seemed to have taken a backseat to Trump’s assassination attempt and the triumphant opening of the Republican convention on Monday. But, apart from the medical unforeseen, the apparent truce of the Democrats, given the imminence of their convention, was nothing more than a turning point: either the party manages to convince him to step aside or it begins to unite around him, decisively and without fissures. Plugging the leaks is a matter of life or death. Biden insists privately that he has a better chance of beating Trump than Harris, but few buy his message. Senator Jon Tester urged him to drop out. Representative Jamie Raskin sent him a letter this month comparing him to a tired batter. The host Joe Scarborough, a Biden ally who introduces Morning Joesuggested that his advisers should push him to leave. In total, 35 Democrats in Congress have shown the exit door to a Biden who is increasingly resentful of the snub (even worse than the one suffered in 2016 when the party elites preferred Hillary Clinton to contest the presidency). Among the few endorsements he receives, the progressive Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stands out, who has warned of the “enormous danger” the party runs if it sidelines Biden.
On the very day of Trump’s coronation on Thursday, attention was divided between the populist circus in Milwaukee, with the Republican machine racing toward the White House, and the turmoil of the Democratic Party. It was beginning to look likely that Biden would not be the person sworn in on January 20, 2025. That would mean two consecutive presidents — Trump in 2020 and Biden in 2024 — would see their reelection bids thwarted, albeit for different reasons. The last time that happened was more than 40 years ago, with Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, during the chaotic years of Watergate and the oil crises.
Politics in the United States were more stable during the last half century than they had been for most of the country’s history. Incumbent presidents often managed to get reelected, and the ideologies of the two parties did not differ much in substance. Until the emergence of the fake news and alternative facts and post-truth, the red carpet that alt right laid and smoothed Trump’s path to the White House in 2016. And again in 2024, judging by the lies and half-truths in his election programme.
But the events of the past week have shown that nothing is the same anymore. Not only because very high-ranking Democrats have rebelled, but also because of the radical metamorphosis, the Copernican turn, of the Republican Party, today a populist, anti-war and xenophobic movement that Ronald Reagan would have had trouble recognizing. The Republican candidate for president is a convicted criminal, the instigator of an insurrection, the assault on the Capitol on January 6, to subvert the result of an election, and, since Saturday, July 13, also the survivor of an attack, credentials that are unusual but that Trump boasts of presenting: this is what he said in the long and tedious acceptance speech of his candidacy, on Thursday in Milwaukee. “I felt very safe because I had God on my side,” he said about the attack to cheers from those present, some of them in tears. With such a partner in tandem, what can go wrong?
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