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      'They won't be able to do anything about this': McConnell revels in Barrett supreme court vote

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      “By tomorrow night,” Mitch McConnell told Senate Republicans on Sunday, after they voted to limit debate and advance the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett, “we’ll have a new member of the United States supreme court.
      “A lot of what we’ve done over the last four years will be undone sooner or later by the next election,” the majority leader said on the Senate floor. “They won’t be able to do much about this for a long time to come.”
      The Republican was alluding to the possibility, largely backed by polling data, that Democrats will take back the White House and the Senate on 3 November.
      Sunday’s vote moved the Senate closer to a final vote on Donald Trump’s third supreme court nominee, a little more than a week before the election. The confirmation vote is expected on Monday evening.
      Two Republicans, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, opposed limiting debate. But Murkowski said on Saturday she intends to vote to confirm.
      “I have no doubt about her capability to do the job and to do it well,” she said.
      No nominee has ever been confirmed this close to an election. More than 58 million ballots have already been cast.
      Democrats boycotted the committee vote on Thursday that advanced the nomination. Ahead of Monday night’s vote, they expressed concerns about the risks of contracting Covid-19, after several Republican staffers and members of Vice-President Mike Pence’s team tested positive. Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer urged Democrats not to congregate in the chamber and to cast their votes “quickly and from a safe distance”.
      McConnell twice declined to answer questions about whether Pence would come to the chamber to preside on Monday. At a rally in Florida on Saturday, however, Pence said: “I wouldn’t miss that vote for the world.”
      Schumer said Pence “reportedly intends to come”, and blasted him for being willing to put “the health of everyone who works in this building at risk”.
      “It sets a terrible, terrible example to the American people,” the New York Democrat said. “The Republican party is willing to ignore the pandemic to rush this supreme court nomination forward.”
      Brian Schatz, a senator for Hawaii, told a reporter: “It is clear to me that their closing message is that they’re going to personally deliver Covid to as many people as possible.”
      Republicans did not appear concerned.
      “We’ve done a very good job within the Senate to follow the guidelines as best we can and I think the vice-president will do the same,” said Mike Rounds of South Dakota, adding that Pence was “very responsible”.
      On Sunday the White House said Pence did not have to follow federal guidelines and quarantine for 14 days because he was an essential worker. Pence continued campaigning.
      With Barrett, the supreme court will have a 6-3 conservative majority that could last for years. In the short term, Barrett could weigh in on cases involving the election. Trump has said he believes the court will decide the election and has made clear he wants Barrett on the bench for any such cases.
      Barrett is also likely to participate in oral arguments on 10 November, in which Trump and fellow Republicans are asking the court to strike down the Affordable Care Act, the health law known as Obamacare, in the middle of a pandemic which has infected 8.5m and killed 224,000.
      A favourite of Christian conservatives, Barrett frustrated judiciary committee Democrats this month by sidestepping questions on abortion, presidential powers, climate change, voting rights, Obamacare and other issues. She has criticized rulings upholding Obamacare but said during her confirmation she has no agenda to invalidate the measure.
      Democrats were incensed that Republicans moved forward with Barrett’s confirmation so near an election, after refusing in 2016 to act on a nomination by Barack Obama, because it was an election year. Republicans are hoping Barrett’s confirmation can give a boost to Trump and senators seeking re-election.
      Democrats are considering structural reform to the Senate and the court, should they win back control. Republicans claim such reforms, including expansion of the court, would be dangerous.
      Barrett, 48, has been a federal appeals court judge since 2017 . Before that she was a legal scholar at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. Trump touted her nomination at a campaign rally in New Hampshire on Sunday.
      “We’re giving you a great new supreme court justice,” he said. More

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      Nearly 60 million Americans cast early vote as record-shattering turnout expected

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      Their enthusiasm reflected in post boxes stuffed with mail-in ballots and by hours-long queues at voting sites across the country, by early Sunday almost 60 million Americans had cast a vote in the presidential election, even as the candidates scrambled to deliver their closing message more than a week before election day, 3 November.
      The vast numbers of early voters in the most consequential election in generations is fuelling what promises to be record-shattering turnout. Not since 1908 have more than 65% of eligible US voters actually exercised that right.
      Behind the eye-popping headline figures lie clues to why voters are so engaged, so early. Democrats hold a sizeable advantage in the early returns. The reason, analysts believe, is simply Donald Trump, and by extension his handling of the coronavirus pandemic that has infected 8.5 million people and killed 224,000.
      “The pandemic is part of it, particularly for older voters,” said Dr Larry Sabato, founder and director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. “I’m pushing 70 myself, and it has to be a part of your calculations, we’re kind of vulnerable.
      “But to me, that doesn’t explain the lines. People really have bought into the understanding that if this isn’t the most important election we’ve ever had, it’s one of several. People are determined to express themselves and we all know why: Donald Trump. That includes his base: the cult is going to support the cult leader. But there are more, maybe quite a bit more, who want to end this nightmare. And that’s the way people put it. If you don’t like the word I’m sorry – that’s just the way it is.”
      [embedded content]
      More than one third of the votes already returned come from the three most populous states, California, Texas and Florida, according to the US Elections project, an independent data analysis by the University of Florida.
      California is staunchly Democrat, and its 55 electoral college votes are all but a lock for former vice-president Joe Biden. The race for the 38 votes in Texas is closer, but leaning strongly Republican.
      That leaves the swing state of Florida and its 29 electoral college votes as a glittering prize. So far, from 5.3m mail-in and in-person votes recorded, representing almost 40% of 14 million registered voters, Democrats hold an advantage of more than 7%, or around 400,000 votes.
      “It is our most mega, mega state,” Sabato said. “I like to put it that way, and there’s no way practically for Trump to get elected without Florida.”
      The president voted in Florida on Saturday.
      “If he loses there it will be obvious he’s going to lose,” Sabato said. “If Biden loses Florida, though, it is not the end for him. He has quite a number of other paths. [But] the problem with losing Florida is it is an indication that you’re likely not to do well in other states – we’re talking about Georgia, North Carolina, even parts of the midwest.”
      The Democrats’ lead in Florida appears to be amplified nationally, at least in the 19 states that release party affiliations with their statistics. In those states, registered Democrats have sent in more than 13m votes to Republicans’ 7.4m, with 6m votes from minor or no party affiliates making up the remainder.
      Across all states, the University of Florida reports, votes cast early amount to more than 42% of those from the entire 2016 election. In some places the figure is even higher, such as Hays county, Texas, where 73,277 early votes are several hundred more than the total four years ago.
      Sabato cautioned Republicans not to rely on the tradition of Democrats’ early voting advantages being wiped out when their own supporters turn out on election day.
      Trump “sure can win in the swing states”, he said, “Trump people who weren’t registered or didn’t vote the last time, they have spent four years identifying them. That’s been the hidden campaign that people haven’t talked about.
      “But you’re taking a tremendous chance when you put all your chips on the election day vote. Suppose there’s a hurricane barreling toward Florida. Almost certainly there will be really bad weather in at least a couple of swing states, you know, lots of things happen in life, and maybe the spike up in coronavirus will keep a lot of those older Republicans away on the day.”
      Michael McDonald, a professor of political science who maintains the University of Florida database, told the Guardian’s Fight to Vote project extraordinarily brisk early voting had handed Democrats a clear advantage, noting that the party’s supporters had not only submitted significantly larger numbers of ballot requests, but were also returning them at a higher rate than Republicans.
      Like Sabato, however, McDonald also urged caution.
      “The irony here is Democrats are actually doing Republicans a favour,” he said. “It should benefit Republicans who are trying to vote on election day that the Democrats have done them this favour of not standing in line in front of them.” More

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      'Sue if you must': Lincoln Project rejects threat over Kushner and Ivanka billboards

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      The Lincoln Project “will not be intimidated by empty bluster”, a lawyer for the group wrote late on Saturday, in response to a threat from an attorney for Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner over two billboards put up in Times Square.“Sue if you must,” Matthew Sanderson said.The New York City billboards show the president’s daughter and her husband, both senior White House advisers, displaying apparent indifference to public suffering under Covid-19.Kushner is shown next to the quote “[New Yorkers] are going to suffer and that’s their problem”, above a line of body bags. Trump is shown gesturing, with a smile, to statistics for how many New Yorkers and Americans as a whole have died.According to Johns Hopkins University, more than 8.5m coronavirus cases have been recorded across the US and more than 224,000 have died. Case numbers are at record daily levels and one study has predicted 500,000 deaths by February. New York was hit hard at the pandemic’s outset.The Lincoln Project is a group of former Republican consultants who have made it their mission to attack Donald Trump and support Joe Biden.On Friday, Marc Kasowitz, an attorney who has represented the president against allegations of fraud and sexual assault, wrote to the Lincoln Project, demanding the “false, malicious and defamatory” ads be removed, or “we will sue you for what will doubtless be enormous compensatory and punitive damages”.The Lincoln Project responded that they would not remove the billboards, citing first amendment rights of free speech and the “reckless mismanagement of Covid-19” by the Trump White House.In a legal response on Saturday night, attorney Matthew Sanderson told Kasowitz: “Please peddle your scare tactics elsewhere. The Lincoln Project will not be intimidated by such empty bluster … your clients are no longer Upper East Side socialites, able to sue at the slightest offense to their personal sensitivities.”Due to a “gross act of nepotism”, Sanderson wrote, citing supreme court precedent and “substantial constitutional protections for those who speak out”, Trump and Kushner have become public officials whom Americans “have the right to discuss and criticise freely”.Kasowitz claimed Kushner “never said” the words attributed to him on the billboards, and Trump “never made the gesture” she is shown to make.Vanity Fair reported the Kushner quote, from a meeting in March, in which Kushner criticised New York governor Andrew Cuomo. Trump tweeted the pose used by the Lincoln Project in July, controversially promoting Goya foods.The “bruised self-image” of the president’s daughter, Sanderson wrote, “does not change the fact that this billboard accurately depicts her support of a federal response that has utterly failed to prevent an unmitigated tragedy for the United States”.“May I suggest,” he added, “that if Mr Kushner and Ms Trump are genuinely concerned about salvaging their reputations, they would do well to stop suppressing truthful criticism and instead turn their attention to the Covid-19 crisis that is still unfolding under their inept watch.“These billboards are not causing [their] standing with the public to plummet. Their incompetence is.”A footnote to Sanderson’s letter cited “one of the seminal libel-proof plaintiff cases”, that of a well-known mobster whose reputation was “so tarnished … he could claim no damages for defamation”.“Mr Kushner and Ms Trump’s claims will fare no better than Boobie Cerasini’s given their tarnished reputations on Covid-19,” it said.Sanderson also said “this isn’t over” and added: “Sue if you must.”As University of Richmond law professor Carl Tobias told the Guardian on Saturday, that seems unlikely.Donald Trump “has honed litigation abuse, as a business person and president, to an art form,” Tobias said. But “if they did sue, the litigation might take years to resolve, be expensive and lead to embarrassing revelations … suits like this by people who have thrust themselves into the public eye are notoriously difficult to win.“In short, this appears to be the usual Trump family bluster.” More

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      'Deep down, he's a terrified little boy': Bob Woodward, John Bolton and others on Trump

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      Bob Woodward: ‘I can’t think of a time I’ve felt more anxiety about the presidency’Bob Woodward is associate editor of the Washington Post and the author of 20 books on American politics. In 50 years as a journalist he has covered nine presidents. His reporting on the Watergate break-in and cover-up with his colleague Carl Bernstein helped bring down Richard Nixon and won the Post a Pulitzer prize. His latest book about Donald Trump, Rage, is based on 10 hours of interviews, spread over 19 taped phone calls, often initiated by the president himself, in which Trump proved “only too willing to blow the whistle on himself”, as the Observer’s review noted.There is an atmosphere in Washington of high anxiety. Trump is melting down, to put it charitably. His campaign has been about lashing out, about wanting his former political opponents – President Obama and Joe Biden, who’s now running against him, of course – to be indicted then charged. Then there was his announcement that he is not necessarily going to accept the electoral result against him. The idea that the president would put in doubt the basic process of democracy and voting is not only unacceptable, it is a nightmare. More

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      A Joe Biden White House will have little time and less love for ‘Britain’s Trump’ | Andrew Rawnsley

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      When the long race for the White House ends, another begins: the sprint to be the first European leader to be granted an audience by the new US president. In 2016, Theresa May was distraught to have got a wooden spoon in the competition to put in an early congratulatory telephone call to Trump Tower. That made her even more neuralgic about beating a path to Washington ahead of her European rivals. Mrs May had to throw in the promise of a Trump state visit to the UK – I rather rudely called it “pimping out the Queen” – to ensure that she got to the White House first.
      This desperation can make British prime ministers look pathetically needy, but there is a reason why they set so much store by displays of proximity with the Oval Office. How important a prime minister is to the United States, the planet’s largest economy and most potent military force, sends a message about how much influence the UK wields in the world. So it is telling that Number 10 is resigned to the prospect that Boris Johnson will not be the first name on Joe Biden’s call sheet if he becomes the 46th president. Nor is there any expectation that Mr Johnson will be first in line when they hand out invitations to the White House. He has already quit a race UK prime ministers are usually pretty good at winning.
      “There is an intrinsic problem for Boris,” observes Sir Christopher Meyer, the UK’s ambassador in Washington during the presidencies of Bill Clinton and George W Bush. “The Democrats think Boris is a pea from the same pod as Trump.” Being “Britain’s Trump” goes down almost as poisonously as being Trump himself among many in Team Biden. They are bracketed together in the minds of Democrats not just because both are rule-breaking populists who have polarised their countries and trashed historic alliances. Likely members of a Biden administration remember examples of the Tory leader’s insultingly Trumpian behaviour. Ben Rhodes, who was deputy national security adviser when Mr Biden was vice-president to Barack Obama, has remarked: “I’m old enough to remember when Boris Johnson said Obama opposed Brexit because he was Kenyan.” A more recent inflammatory episode exposed a complete absence of thought in Number 10 about the man whom the polls suggest will be the next US president.
      One of the most essential things to know about Mr Biden – it would be on the first page if anyone wrote a book called Biden for Beginners – is that he is a Catholic who is extremely proud of his Irish ancestry. Mr Johnson was either blithe or ignorant about that when he declared that he was ready to break international law by dishonouring clauses concerning Ireland in the withdrawal agreement with the EU. Mr Biden was one of the voices in the chorus of American condemnation that the Johnson government was jeopardising the Good Friday agreement. “That was profoundly clumsy and stupid,” says Sir Chris. “It immediately ignited the Irish-American lobby in Washington, which is second in power only to the pro-Israeli lobby.”
      Mr Johnson can be quite adept at shape-shifting when he thinks it suits his interests. He was a liberal mayor of London before he became the face of the anti-immigrant Brexit campaign. Confronted with a Democrat in the White House, he may try to slough off his Trumpian skin and offer himself as a useful partner for an internationalist president. For his part, Mr Biden will say that America’s ties with the UK are important to him, if only because that is what all American presidents say. It is nevertheless set to start out as one of the frostiest relationships between Number 10 and the White House since Harold Wilson and Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s.
      Though Mr Biden has been a large figure in US politics for decades, one well-placed observer says that Number 10 is “absolutely clueless” about him and his key people. In the past, it has been usual for the Washington embassy to attach a diplomat to the campaigns of presidential candidates, the better to get to know their teams and likely priorities in office. Wary of any suggestion of outside interference in the US election, the Biden team banned meetings with foreign diplomats. Downing Street has found it hard to find other ways to establish connections. Previous Tory governments had good lines of communication to both parties in the US. This Brexiter-dominated cabinet has cultivated ties solely with Republicans. It was only very recently and very belatedly that Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, managed to get some time with Biden allies on Capitol Hill. If they were smarter, the Johnson government would also have paid a lot of attention to Mr Biden’s running mate, Kamala Harris, because she will be a 77-year-old’s heartbeat away from the presidency.
      Even if a Biden administration decides to let bygones be bygones, the Johnson government will still struggle to make itself relevant in Washington. After a Trump presidency that has massively strained America’s historic alliances while often fawning to authoritarians, a Biden presidency will try to reassert US leadership of the world’s democracies. A critical feature of that will be detraumatising the transatlantic relationship. At a recent Ditchley conference of foreign policy experts from America, Britain and elsewhere, one question that preoccupied the gathering was who would become Mr Biden’s “special friend” in Europe. Emmanuel Macron is very eager to secure that status, though others familiar with thinking among the Biden team believe that their highest priority will be re-establishing strong relations with Germany. Almost no one expects the UK to have preferred partnership status.
      After the huge distress to European leaders of enduring a US president who willed the breakup of the European Union, a Biden administration will revert to something much closer to America’s traditional post-1945 policy. Namely that US interests are best served by Europe being stable and cohesive. Having severed its central bond with its neighbours, the UK can no longer hope to offer itself to Washington as America’s bridge across the Atlantic.
      Searching for areas where the relationship could still be close, some emphasise “the hard security issues” – military co-operation, counter-terrorism and intelligence – where there are mutual interests that have historically transcended the personalities of leaders. “When the Americans are looking for military help, they ask who are our allies and what have they got?” says one senior Tory who thinks this still matters. But Johnson government officials sound rather desperate when they try to talk up the importance of the UK’s much-reduced military heft. Mr Biden is not planning any wars and, even if he were, the United States can act without the help of Britain.
      The biggest foreign policy challenge of the Biden presidency will be managing his country’s tense strategic competition with China while avoiding a deterioration into armed confrontation. Britain’s ability to be of use to Washington in that sphere is limited because our capacity to apply meaningful pressure on China is not high. The UK government has protested in vain about China’s treatment of Hong Kong.
      Downing Street also sounds as if it is clutching at very feeble straws when it suggests that there will be an opportunity to win favour next year when Britain hosts the UN climate change conference. Mr Biden is not exactly a summit novice and his team have clocked that Britain was mealymouthed when Mr Trump ripped up American commitments to tackling the climate crisis.
      There are compelling reasons why a change at the White House ought to unnerve Mr Johnson. The Trump presidency emboldens populist nationalists around the world by encouraging them to believe that they are part of an irresistibly triumphant global trend. Defeat for him will give his one term in office more the character of a freakish spasm and leave imitators looking like purveyors of an ideological style that is going out of fashion.
      During the Trump period, Mr Johnson has tried to lever influence with other leaders by presenting himself as the man who has the ear of, and can help to interpret, the White House wild man. “Boris Johnson sold himself as the Trump whisperer,” says Jonathan Powell, a diplomat in Washington before he became Tony Blair’s chief of staff. “Without Trump, what is the point of Johnson?” More existentially, the British may ask themselves where his policies have left this country other than looking alone in a dangerous world. Brexit has fractured the relationship with Europe, one pillar of the postwar foreign policy. Now it looks highly likely that the other pillar, a close relationship with the US, will be shuddering.
      • Andrew Rawnsley is Chief Political Commentator of the Observer More

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      'Power grab': how Republican hardball gave us Amy Coney Barrett

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      The almost certain confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the supreme court on Monday represents a “power grab” by Republicans facing possible wipeout at the ballot box, activists and analysts say.
      Republicans on the Senate judiciary committee shrugged off a Democratic boycott on Thursday to advance Barrett’s nomination to the full Senate, which will vote little more than a week before the presidential election. If confirmed, Barrett could be sworn in as a justice almost immediately.
      To critics, the rushed process represents one of the most naked power plays yet by a party which, confronting dismal opinion polls, is weaponizing unelected judges to compensate for setbacks in elections. Even as they contemplate the loss of political power, Republicans are poised to cement judicial power for generations.
      “This is like the last gasp by the Republican party to try to lock in their minority rule,” said Christopher Kang, co-founder and chief counsel of the progressive group Demand Justice. “They’re potentially just days away from not only losing the White House but also the Senate, maybe even resoundingly, and so they’re trying to do everything they can to consolidate on the supreme court a Trump supermajority for decades to come.”
      Under Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, Republicans have built a reputation for ruthless bare knuckle tactics Democrats struggle to combat. They blocked swaths of Barack Obama’s legislative agenda and in 2016 refused to grant a hearing to his supreme court nominee Merrick Garland, arguing that it was an election year so the voters should decide.
      In 2018, when the conservative nominee Brett Kavanaugh faced credible allegations of sexual assault, Republicans ignored fierce protests and rammed his appointment through. And when liberal justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died last month, Donald Trump moved like lightning to replace her with Barrett, 48, a lifetime appointment who would tilt America’s highest court to a 6-3 conservative majority.
      It was another example of Republican hardball – audacious, shameless and devastatingly effective.
      Comedian Bill Maher told viewers of his HBO show: “If you haven’t gotten it yet, this kind of completely bald-faced premeditated hypocrisy should make it clear. There’s no catching them in an inconsistency. They don’t care because it’s all and only about power. The only rule Republicans play by is: the people who win make the rules. Power talks, losers walk.”
      Democrats cried foul, pointing out that the Senate has never confirmed a supreme court nominee so close to a presidential election. They were whistling in the wind. During committee hearings Barrett swerved most of their questions, refusing to commit herself on abortion, the transfer or power or the climate crisis.
      Kang said: “The process was so rushed and she was far more evasive and refused to answer more questions than any other nominee. That was a little bit jarring, if not surprising, but it shows how little respect Republicans have not only for the Senate but the supreme court itself. The Republican party is very blatantly just treating the supreme court as another political branch of government.”
      Demand Justice has called for Democrats to fight back by expanding the court, noting that its size has been changed seven times before. Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, has said he will appoint a bipartisan commission to examine such proposals.
      Kang predicted: “Republicans’ attempt to assert their raw political partisan power grab to get a sixth seat on the court, when they already have five, could end up backfiring spectacularly on them and they could be on the losing side of a 7-6 supreme court before they know it.”
      All 12 Republicans on the judiciary committee voted in favour of Barrett. Ted Cruz of Texas hailed perhaps the “single most important accomplishment” of Trump’s presidency. Democrats displayed posters at their desks, of Americans who benefited from Obama’s Affordable Care Act which they warn Barrett could help strike down.
      Democrats have also warned that if Trump follows through on his threat to dispute the outcome of the 3 November election, it might go before Barrett and other members of the supreme court for a final ruling, just like the 2000 election between George W Bush and Al Gore.

      Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard University, described Barrett’s probable confirmation as a “‘power grab’ in every relevant sense of the term, especially in light of President Trump’s open concession that he appointed judge Coney Barrett in part to ensure her ability to vote in his favour should his re-election as president end up turning on a case the supreme court would need to resolve in order to give him an electoral college victory in the face of a national popular defeat.”
      Trump has appointed more than 200 federal judges, likely to be his most lasting legacy whether he serves one term or two. Critics suggest the courts represent the last bulwark of Republican minority rule and the Barrett episode is starkly indicative of a party that has lost its ideological and ethical moorings and now treats power as an end in itself.
      Kurt Bardella, a senior adviser to the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group, said Republicans have betrayed their claims to be the party of fiscal responsibility, pro-life principles, small government and congressional oversight.
      “When a party diverges from itself on so many issues so many times,” he said, “it tells you they don’t actually have any moral convictions or principles that guide them. Only the pursuit of power.” More

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      From climate to China, how Joe Biden is plotting America’s restoration

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      By any measure, Joe Biden is old in the ways of the world. As Barack Obama’s vice-president, he met all the big international actors. As chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee, he helped direct US foreign policy.
      After four years of Donald Trump’s manic leadership, the Democrat offers a steady, dependable hand on the tiller. Biden’s grand aim: a glorious American restoration, at home and abroad.
      But his long experience cuts both ways. For many on the left, Biden’s conventional global outlook represents not so much a new dawn as a return to the Washington establishment-led policies of the pre-Trump era.
      Those hoping for radical action on pressing issues such as the climate crisis, global inequality, or confronting authoritarian “strongman” leaders could be disappointed.
      If he wins, Biden’s supporters say, America will be back in charge at the global helm. Normal service will resume. Biden’s critics say he is but a pale shadow of his old boss – a cautious, centrist politician like Obama but lacking the latter’s vision.
      In either case, who Biden selects to be his secretary of state, national security adviser and defence secretary could be crucial.
      Pressure from Democratic party progressives such as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren pushed Biden leftwards during the campaign.
      The twin health and economic crises caused by the coronavirus pandemic also shifted his thinking. He now talks about “reimagining” America’s relationship with the world.
      Whether his views have really changed remains to be seen. And for all his foreign policy expertise, it’s clear Biden’s primary focus, if elected, will be domestic.
      Writing in Foreign Affairs magazine earlier this year, he set out a “foreign policy for the middle class” whose top priority was “enabling Americans to succeed in the global economy”.
      Strengthening the US at home was a prerequisite for restoring global leadership, he said. His priorities were plain.
      The idea that America must and should lead internationally, and that Trump “abdicated” that duty, is nevertheless hard-wired into Biden, a child of the cold war.
      This assumption of supremacy is challenged nowadays by those who believe post-1989 and post-9/11 US leadership, and particularly its armed interventions abroad, have served neither the US nor the world. They point to Iraq – a war Biden supported. More

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      Biden gains as suburban women and elderly voters look to dump Trump

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      Joe Biden’s hopes of reaching the White House could rest on two crucial demographic groups that appear to be deserting Donald Trump: elderly people and suburban women.
      They would join a broad coalition that includes strong support among African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, the LGBTQ community and young people. With the gender gap potentially bigger than ever, the president appears more reliant than ever on white men.
      Little more than a week before election day, Biden enjoys a double-digit lead in almost every national poll and is ahead in the crucial battleground states. More than 52 million people have already voted, according to the US Elections Project.
      In the past four presidential elections, Republicans have led among the elderly by around 10 points. But about four in five Americans killed by the coronavirus were older than 65 and a majority of Americans say Trump has mishandled the pandemic.
      The president trails among elderly voters by more than 20 points, according to recent CNN and Wall Street Journal/NBC News polls. This swing could prove critical in states such as Arizona and Florida, which have a high number of retirees.
      “In terms of voting blocs, there are two that are absolutely dooming Donald Trump,” said Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota.
      “He won the senior vote by seven points in 2016; that was very important in Florida and a few other states. He’s now losing that bloc and the polls differ about how much, but the fact that he no longer has an advantage among seniors is really crippling for him.
      “And then he has so alienated suburban women that it’s put a whole number of states in play, including states you wouldn’t expect, like Georgia. This kind of macho presidency has gotten the ringing rejection by women, particularly educated women who are so tired of the 1950s.”
      The suburban revolt against Trump’s bigotry, hardline agenda and chaotic leadership was manifest in the 2018 midterm elections when Democrats gained 41 seats in the House of Representatives, the biggest such shift since the post-Watergate 1974 elections, and won the popular vote by 8.6%.
      Trump’s campaign to win back this constituency, variously known as “soccer moms”, “security moms” and “hockey moms”, has been anything but subtle. He has tried to tap racist fears of suburbs overrun by crime, violence and low-income housing. In one tweet, he promised to protect “the Suburban Housewives of America”. At a recent rally in Pennsylvania, he pleaded: “Suburban women, will you please like me? Remember? Hey, please, I saved your damn neighborhood, OK?”

      Polls suggest the plea is falling on deaf ears. Biden leads by 23 points among suburban women in swing states, according to the New York Times and Siena College, and by 19 points among suburban women overall, according to Pew Research. Pew also found that Hispanic women prefer Biden by 44 points and Black women go for the Democrat by a staggering 85 points.
      Andrea Moore, 45, a stay-at-home mom in suburban Wayne county, Michigan, voted for Trump in 2016 because she was tired of career politicians.
      “He was an unknown quantity, but now we know,” she told the Associated Press, explaining that she will not vote for the president again because of “a million little things” including his divisiveness, fearmongering and failed Covid-19 response.
      The trends were underlined this week by a national survey of 2,538 Americans by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) that showed Trump haemorrhaging support among the elderly and suburban women as well as another, less expected group: white Catholics.
      Only 38% of people aged 65 or older approve of Trump’s handling of the pandemic while 61% say they disapprove, the PRRI found. Among white college-educated women, seven in 10 disapprove of Trump’s handling of the pandemic, seven in 10 disapprove of his response to racial justice protests and a similar share believe he has encouraged white supremacists.
      There are also signs of erosion among religious conservatives, a bulwark of Trump’s base. PRRI found that while three in four (76%) white evangelical Protestants still approve of the job Trump is doing, only 52% of white mainline Protestants and 49% of white Catholics agree. Biden would be only the second Catholic president.
      Robert P Jones, chief executive and founder of PRRI, said: “White Catholics are a group that particularly in those swing rust belt states – Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Ohio – are really on the president’s must-win list. They’re also important in a place like Arizona. They are as big or bigger than white evangelicals in those states, so in terms of religious groups they are quite an important constituency.
      “White Catholics in 2016 were basically evenly divided between Trump and Hillary Clinton at this stage in the race. We have them at 54% Biden, 41% Trump, so that’s a sea change. This group is going to play an outsized role in Trump’s path to the electoral college and he’s not doing well with them at all.”
      Clinton was beaten in the electoral college after suffering heavy losses among non-college-educated white voters – a majority of the population in battleground states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – and failing to turn out African Americans at levels Barack Obama achieved. Current polling suggests Biden will do better on both accounts. More