The crowd was small at first. But as the night wore on, the numbers grew and so did belief in miracles. In the early hours of 9 November 2016, Donald Trump and family walked into the ballroom of a midtown Manhattan hotel to celebrate one of the greatest political upsets of all time.
“Now it is time for America to bind the wounds of division – have to get together,” the new president-elect said. “To all Republicans and Democrats and independents across this nation, I say it is time for us to come together as one united people.”
The speech is now all the more striking because, in the view of countless critics, Trump spent the next four years doing precisely the opposite. His norm-busting presidency deepened divisions, poured oil on flames, stress tested institutions to breaking point and rendered truth itself a partisan issue.
And on Tuesday, millions of Americans will deliver their verdict in a referendum on Trump’s first term, after a bitterly fought election campaign that has left the nation with even deeper wounds than those exposed four years ago.
Trump’s opponent, former vice-president Joe Biden, has left the president trailing in every major national opinion poll since becoming Democrats’ presumptive nominee in April. Biden commands a bigger lead over Trump, nationally and in several crucial battleground states, than the ill-fated Hillary Clinton did at the same stage in 2016.
Yet the stunning repudiation of the political establishment that year has left Democrats haunted. There is little sign of complacency in the Biden camp amid the profound uncertainties of an election campaign waged against the backdrop of the coronavirus pandemic, and fears that the incumbent will seek to declare victory prematurely and prevent every vote being counted.
As both candidates spent Monday in a final frenzied sprint across battleground states, Trump was in trouble. Past incumbents have successfully made elections about not themselves but their opponents. George W Bush shifted the spotlight to challenger John Kerry. Barack Obama did likewise to Mitt Romney. But this president’s profligate and shambolic campaign could neither escape the pandemic nor find a way to define Biden. It is still all about Trump.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
