US elections 2024

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      Put yourself in the shoes of a Donald Trump voter – and understand what drives his success | Simon Jenkins

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      Donald Trump is certain to be the Republican candidate in this year’s election for US president. He is also currently favourite to win. To most readers of the Guardian, I am sure this prospect is appalling, as it is to most Britons. The nation to which they gave birth and language, that has been their friend and protector down the ages, seems to be going mad.Britons who know the US are amazed that, however reluctantly, enough of its voters might again choose Trump to rule over them after the experience of 2017 to 2021. Who are these Americans? How can they be so blind to his faults, with the law hounding him, gossip ridiculing him and commentators pouring scorn and derision on his every word?The answer is that the Americans who support Trump are not those whom most Britons know. They are elderly and rural: they are often, but by no means solely, working class and/or non-graduates. But, above all, they love Trump because they, too, are hostile to the Americans that he purports to hate.These hated Americans – the language of Trump’s rallies is visceral – mostly live in big cities down the east and west coasts. They favour federal government, identity politics, social liberalism and free trade. They are led by a college-educated, liberal establishment. Of course, these are generalisations – but that is what Trump trades in.His claim is that over the past two decades this establishment has corrupted the nation’s identity and bruised its essence. Using the rhetoric of a mafia boss, he declares he will smash these enemies of America. He will stop Mexicans crossing the border, with guns if need be. He will execute drug dealers, protect American families from gender politics, leave idiot Europeans to their petty wars and end Biden’s crazy foreign interventions.Trump is the braggart of every bar-room brawl. Most democratic leaders come to power with their rough edges softened through climbing the ladder of party politics. Not so Trump. The only experience he brought to the White House was that of New York’s property jungle, a world of rivalry, double-dealing and revenge; his favourite motto is the phrase he used in January towards his now fallen rival Nikki Haley: “I don’t get too angry, I get even.”A large amount of the abuse that Trump attracts from his critics disappointingly relies on raw snobbery. It comprises attacks on his dress, his manners, his vulgar houses and his coarse turn of phrase – and echoes the remarks of English toffs on the arrival of the first Labour government in Downing Street. They do him no harm in the eyes of his fans. Early comparisons with Mussolini played to his self-image as a warrior taking on an entrenched elite.See it through their eyes: the US did not collapse into dictatorship under Trump. Enemies were not arrested nor hostile media shut down. Since leaving office, though, his own enemies have not stopped trying to convict and imprison him, even as the trials merely aid his cause. Colorado’s attempt to stop him running for office was as legally wrongheaded as it was counterproductive.The US economy did well under Trump, better than Britain’s. He made a genuine if futile attempt to find peace in Korea. Vladimir Putin, with whom his relations remain obscure, did not invade Ukraine while he was in the White House. His recent demand that Nato and Europe reassess both their strategy and their forces was hardly unreasonable, if poorly expressed. His fixation with immigration is hardly confined to the American continent.That is why Trump’s enemies would do well to look to the causes of their own unpopularity. Democracy gives no quarter. It is one person, one vote, and its believers cannot complain when the arithmetic goes against them. Trump complains that the US ruling class and its media – apart from the bits he controls – are governed by new ideologies based on gender and race. He claims they want to ban conservatism from campuses, “defund” the police and flood the country with Mexican labour and Chinese goods. There is just enough truth in these accusations to have his supporters cheering him on.A prominent US senator recently assured a private gathering in London that Americans would never return Trump to the White House. It was inconceivable. Those declaring for him were just “just trying to give us a fright”.I can only hope he is right. With the present state of things in the world, the erratic Trump should never be in a position to lead what is still, tenuously, the free world. But those who oppose him should study what makes him so popular in the eyes of most Americans – and makes them less so.
      Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist More

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      Taylor Swift can teach us all a lesson in how democracy works | Margaret Sullivan

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      If you’re any kind of a Taylor Swift fan, you’ve seen the footage of the pop star arguing with her father. The subject is politics. Or, more specifically, whether Taylor should express herself publicly on political issues and candidates, in this case in defense of women’s reproductive rights.Dad makes the case against it. In protective mode, he wants his daughter to stay in her lane: music. It’s not good for her safety or her career or her mental health to go prancing through this minefield of controversy, alienating people and drawing abusers along the way. One of her managers agrees – does she really want to see only half as many people at her next show?Taylor is, at times, in tears. Speaking out about her core beliefs is simply something she feels a moral obligation to do, she tells her father. And, of course, she does just that – in fact, eventually, she went so far as to endorse Joe Biden for president in 2020. (It must have worked; he did win, after all, despite what certain ex-presidents would have you believe.)Swift spoke out again this week when she urged her fans to take some basic democratic action.“I wanted to remind you guys to vote the people who most represent you into power,” Swift said on her Instagram story on Super Tuesday. “If you haven’t already, make a plan to vote today.”In this case, she wasn’t pushing for a specific candidate – merely telling her millions of followers to be engaged citizens. It wasn’t just “vote” – it was “make a plan to vote”. Swift was specific: she told people to check the locations and hours of their polling places, in her state of Tennessee and beyond.For November, “make a plan to vote” means getting registered, something that Swift has urged before, and which has resulted in voting registration spikes in the tens of thousands. The Biden campaign, of course, hopes that she’ll go further eventually and endorse him again.But even this basic message is important. And simple though it is, it made some people angry. Why can’t she shut up and just be an entertainer, they seemed to think? The Guardian reported one response posted on social media: “WOW: Taylor Swift has officially begun interfering in the 2024 election. She tells her young female fans to vote the candidate that ‘most represents you into power’.”Horrors! Representative government at work! There’s a strong “stay in your lane” vibe from that and other negative responses.I admire Swift for using her vast influence for something important. And she serves as a good role model for the rest of us. We may not have her mass numbers of followers – no one does – but we can all play a role in sustaining American democracy, which is looking rather fragile right now.Last year, when I interviewed scholars, authors and commentators on my podcast, American Crisis, I asked each of them for a pro-democracy “call to action” for both the media and for citizens. They had plenty of pointed advice for the media – like prioritizing journalism’s public service mission instead of focusing on polls, the horserace and chasing clicks. And they were in general agreement about what regular people – non-celebrities – can do.“We face a really existential choice about the type of country we want to have and how we want to be governed,” the author Garrett Graff warned. He added that he had been shocked at how radically and quickly the guardrails of democracy have crumbled in recent years and how “cynically” the news media has played along for the sake of profit.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSo, Graff counseled, citizens need to be intensely focused on the stakes – the consequences – of the coming presidential election and down-ballot elections as well. And to act accordingly.As Ruth Ben-Ghiat told me, staying well-informed is crucial. An expert in authoritarian leaders and the author of Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present, she knows how important it is that citizens resist the temptation to tune out and throw up our hands. Taking advantage of a passive electorate is one way that strongmen manage to gain power.Democracy, by its nature, requires participation. You have to give a damn. That can mean donating to a campaign, volunteering as a poll worker, helping people to register or to get to a voting location. And make your own plan to vote; then carry it out.Being an engaged, vocal citizen isn’t the easiest thing to do, as Taylor Swift’s father tried to tell her.But she went ahead anyway. And so should we all.
      Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture More

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      Nikki Haley has one last card to play: will she eventually endorse Trump?

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      Nikki Haley’s withdrawal from the Republican presidential primary on Wednesday was “not a shocker”, a leading anti-Trump conservative said, in a contender for understatement of the political year.“As we’ve said for months,” Tara Setmayer added, “she has no path and [Donald] Trump will be the GOP nominee.”But Setmayer also pointed to the impact Haley did make in the Republican primary, what it means for Trump, and the choice now facing the former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador as she seeks to retain political relevance.“Now let the over/under begin for when Haley endorses Trump,” Setmayer, a Republican operative turned member of the anti-Trump Lincoln project, said on social media.On Super Tuesday, Haley added Vermont to her weekend win in Washington DC but otherwise suffered a wipeout. Though Trump has not yet mathematically secured the nomination, Haley bowed to the inevitable the following morning.There was consolation for Haley. Across the slate of states which voted on Tuesday, she once again finished closer to Trump than expected, her vote shares above those predicted by polling.Tellingly, that illustrated sizable opposition to Trump among some Republicans and conservative independents.“Nikki Haley’s performance across the board is a warning signal for … Trump’s lieutenants,” Rick Wilson, a Republican strategist and ad maker turned Lincoln Project co-founder, wrote on Substack.“Trump’s senior strategist, Chris LaCivita, saw the results in key states late last night, read the exit poll data, scanned the turnout areas, and knew within hours that Trump’s party isn’t unified.“It’s smaller, darker, and more passionately devoted to the dear leader, but depending on the state, between 25% and 40% of Republican and conservative independents just aren’t into Donald Trump.”If most of those voters do not come back, Trump will face a near-impossible task in November against Joe Biden.The question for Trump and his aides, therefore, is how to get Haley onside and win back as many of her supporters as possible, as quickly as possible, while keeping them out of Biden’s camp.Whether Haley will endorse Trump, it follows, is now a central campaign question.In Charleston on Wednesday, announcing her withdrawal, Haley said that in campaigning against Trump for so long, with so little chance of success, she had “wanted Americans to have their voices heard”.“I have done that,” she said. “I have no regrets.”But having recently avoided re-committing to supporting the Republican nominee – which she previously pledged to do – she did not go on to endorse him.Having ruled out a third-party bid, an endorsement is Haley’s last card to play. Endorsements are often bartered for plum jobs (if not in this case vice-president, which Haley has said she does not want). Endorsements, and campaign-trail efforts on behalf of the nominee, can also be used to win support for candidacies yet to come, in Haley’s case after Trump finally leaves the stage.It is fair to say Haley has earned her position of relative influence in a party controlled by Trump. A rare Republican woman of colour in a primary dominated by white men, she vastly outperformed expectations.Though she started out with single-figure polling numbers, confident debate-stage displays saw her eclipse rivals including the former vice-president Mike Pence and Ron DeSantis, the hardline Florida governor who was initially expected to be Trump’s leading challenger, perhaps even his conqueror.Trump skipped every debate. Tellingly, though, he did not need to be onstage to dominate his opponents who were. Before the field began to shrink, all candidates other than Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson, two doomed anti-Trumpers, fought shy of attacking him, aware of his grip on the base.When DeSantis quit, before the New Hampshire primary, Haley finally had a clear field to take the fight to Trump. She began to turn fire his way. But however strongly she spoke – calling the 77-year-old former president “unhinged” and diminished”, doubting he would adhere to the constitution – it was clearly too little, too late.Haley has disappointed Trump’s opponents too.She has said she will vote for Trump over Joe Biden. She also said that if she was elected, and if Trump was convicted on any of the 91 criminal charges he faces, she would give him a pardon.Though Haley has “earned the votes and support of millions of Republican and conservative independent voters in her brief time in the spotlight”, Wilson said, she will soon “break their hearts for nothing.“Reality has now set in for millions of Republican voters. They must choose between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. In all likelihood, Nikki Haley will make the wrong choice and back Trump.”That endorsement, Wilson said, “will prove it was all for nothing. The abyss is calling, and she’s peering down into the darkness.” More

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      Who is running for president in 2024? Biden, Trump and the full list of candidates

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      The 2024 election season is under way, with Donald Trump the lone Republican candidate left seeking to unseat the sitting president, Joe Biden. After the pandemic changed the way Americans campaigned and voted four years ago, and three years after thousands of rioters waged violent protest at the nation’s Capitol to upend the last election’s results, the US will face new obstacles in carrying out the democratic process.Here is the list of candidates in the primary elections as of Super Tuesday.@font-face{font-family:”Guardian Headline Full”;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:300;font-style:normal}@font-face{font-family:”Guardian Headline 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      Third party

      Dropped out

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      Donald Trump
      Former president of the United States

      Former president Donald Trump is the top contender for the Republican party nomination, even as he faces several legal hurdles, including federal charges over obstructing justice and violating the Espionage Act. Trump, a longtime businessman, unsuccessfully ran for re-election as president in 2020, and refused to accept the outcome of the results. Trump most recently said he is pro-life, and would continue his hardline immigration stance in a second term if elected. He has also renewed attacks on trans people, especially athletes, and his anti-China agenda.
      Trump won big in Iowa, with 51% of votes – full Republican results
      In New Hampshire, Trump beat Haley by 10 points – full New Hampshire primary results
      Trump wins Nevada caucuses in effective one-horse race – Nevada primary results in full
      Trump beat Haley in her home state – full South Carolina primary results
      Trump defeats Haley in Michigan – full Michigan primary results
      Trump swept to victory in states across the US on Super Tuesday – full primary results
      Back to topDemocrats@font-face{font-family:”Guardian Headline Full”;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:300;font-style:normal}@font-face{font-family:”Guardian Headline Full”;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-LightItalic.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-LightItalic.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-LightItalic.ttf) 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      Joe Biden
      President of the United States

      Joe Biden is the likely Democratic nominee for the 2024 presidential election. He announced his campaign for re-election on 25 April 2023, exactly four years after he announced his previous, successful presidential campaign. While approval for Biden remains low, hovering just above 40%, political experts say he is the most likely candidate to defeat Donald Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican nomination. Biden has served in politics for over five decades and is running on a platform that includes abortion rights, gun reform and healthcare. At 81, he is the oldest president in US history.
      Biden took 96.2% of the vote in a write-in campaign in New Hampshire – full primary results
      Biden easily won first Democratic contest in South Carolina – full primary results
      Biden won the Democratic vote – full Nevada primary results
      Biden won but sheds support over Gaza – full Michigan primary results
      Biden swept to victory in states across the US on Super Tuesday – full primary results
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      Cenk Uygur
      Political commentator and media host

      Cenk Uygur announced the longest of long-shot campaigns in October. Now 53, the outspoken host of the progressive Young Turks TV show has no experience in elected office – though he did run for Congress in California in 2020 – but perhaps more importantly he was born in Istanbul, Turkey. Most legal scholars would say that makes him ineligible to be president, under article II, section I, clause 5 of the US constitution, which says only “natural born citizens” can hold the office. Uygur says otherwise, and promises to prove it in court. 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      Marianne Williamson
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      Biden challenger Dean Phillips drops out of US presidential race

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      The Minnesota congressman running against Joe Biden in the Democratic primary dropped out of the race on Wednesday, ending a long-shot bid to stop the US president from winning the nomination. He endorsed the president.Dean Phillips, who represents a wealthier suburban area outside Minneapolis, entered the Democratic race seemingly against his will and against the advice of most of his Democratic colleagues. The congressman, who first took office in 2019, first tried to recruit more prominent Democrats to challenge Biden, publicly saying Biden needed to let the next generation lead the party.The announcement comes after he lost his home state of Minnesota, where he gave up a seat he flipped from Republicans in order to enter the presidential race.“I ran for Congress in 2018 to resist Donald Trump, I was trapped in the Capitol in 2021 because of Donald Trump, and I ran for President in 2024 to resist Donald Trump again – because Americans were demanding an alternative, and democracy demands options. But it is clear that alternative is not me,” he said on Twitter/X.“And it is clear that Joe Biden is OUR candidate and OUR opportunity to demonstrate what type of country America is and intends to be.”In his first election test, Phillips nabbed about 20% of the vote in New Hampshire, losing to Biden, whose name was not actually on the ballot.His campaign in New Hampshire was not without controversy: a former political consultant affiliated with Phillips’s campaign claimed responsibility for a now-infamous robocall in New Hampshire that urged voters not to show up to the polls; Phillips has denounced the robocall.Since then, Phillips’s momentum has fallen off, but he has stayed in the race – despite having no listed events and little, if any, campaigning happening in the field in any state. Even in his home state of Minnesota, there was no semblance of a campaign – no stops at local diners, no field office, no ground work.In Michigan, he lost to both an “uncommitted” vote that sought to protest against Biden’s inaction on a ceasefire in Gaza and to Marianne Williamson, the self-help author who had previously suspended her campaign. Williamson, buoyed by the results, made the unusual move to “un-suspend” her campaign.In mid-February, Phillips announced he had to lay off “a lot” of his staff because he had found it so hard to fundraise with an incumbent in the race. Phillips, the heir to a liquor empire, had previously given his campaign several million dollars to get up and running.“We can do it,” he said in a video announcing the layoffs. “We can do better. I love you all and thank you for keeping the faith. And join me, the Dean team, we can do it.”Phillips managed to strike both a self-deprecating earnestness about his own campaign while continually sounding an alarm that Biden cannot win and someone should do something about it – but maybe not him.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“If you resent me for the audacity to challenge Joe Biden, at least you’ll appreciate how relatively strong I’m making him look among primary voters!” Phillips wrote on X, adding a biceps emoji.He shared an opinion piece endorsing him the headline of which said: Vote for whatshisname. He made a meme of a Dean shoe, a Technicolor joke poking at Trump’s new sneaker. He played the guitar.He floated the idea of a “unity ticket” with the Republican candidate Nikki Haley, who has stuck in the GOP race despite repeated losses to Trump. He is still trying to goad other Democrats into the race, specifically calling on Democratic governors such as Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer and JB Pritzker to run.And he has complimented Biden, in a strange way: when a New York Times poll showed Biden trailing Trump and losing support from people who previously voted for him, Phillips cast doubt on the poll.“When the NYT/Siena poll shows me at 12%, you better believe it is flawed,” he wrote on X. “Only 5% even know who I am.” More

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      Far-right candidates see Super Tuesday wins at traditional Republicans’ expense

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      Far-right candidates took notable wins in state elections on Super Tuesday, further confirming the Republican ascendancy of supporters of Donald Trump, the probable GOP nominee for president, at the expense of more traditional conservatives.The highest-profile victory went to Mark Robinson, the lieutenant governor of North Carolina who will now run for governor.The Democratic candidate, Josh Stein, would be the first Jewish governor of North Carolina should he win in November.In opposition to Stein, Robinson is a Hitler-quoting anti-abortion extremist, a dedicated controversialist who once said the superhero movie Black Panther was “created by an agnostic Jew and put to film by [a] satanic marxist … to pull the shekels out of your Schvartze pockets”.But the candidate may find recent remarks about his views on abortion harder to brush off, as Democrats seek to continue a string of wins in campaigns focused on rightwing attacks on reproductive rights.Robinson has supported total abortion bans, calling abortion “murder” and “genocide” and, as reported by CNN, calling the founders of the women’s health organisation Planned Parenthood satanists who practiced witchcraft.The spokesperson for Robinson also called Stein an extremist.Elsewhere in North Carolina, a 21-year-old college student affiliated with the extremist Turning Point USA youth group scored a notable victory when he defeated an 84-year-old state representative who has served for 20 years.Wyatt Gable beat George Cleveland in a close primary race. Earlier this year, the Jacksonville Daily News, a local paper, asked both men what experience they had to recommend themselves to voters.Cleveland said: “I have served as a budget writer since 2010 and have chaired various House committees over the past 14 years in veterans and homeland security, general government, marine resources, and aquaculture.”Gable said: “Currently in the university system and only a few years removed from the public education system, I have an up-close look at our education system …“I am also the Turning Point USA president at East Carolina. As president, I have stopped the school from changing the bathrooms to allow men in the women’s room and vice versa. I have also been able to sign up almost 1,000 new members.”Further west, in Texas, a Republican civil war between Trump-aligned hardliners and establishment figures saw hardliners gain the edge in elections on Tuesday.In a US House primary, Tony Gonzales, a Republican congressman from San Antonio, was headed for a runoff election against Brandon Herrera, a social media personality and gun salesman.Last year, Gonzales was censured by his own state party, for voting in favour of same-sex marriage and gun safety reform (the latter after the massacre of 19 young children and two adults at a school in Uvalde, Texas) and for being seen as soft on immigration and border policy.In the Texas state house, the speaker, Dade Phelan, will contest a runoff with David Covey, a challenger endorsed by Ken Paxton, the state attorney general, Dan Patrick, the lieutenant governor, and Trump himself.Phelan supported Paxton’s impeachment, a failed attempt to remove the attorney general over allegations of bribery, dereliction of duty and disregard for official duty.Paxton, who faces a securities fraud trial next month, also took aim on Tuesday at three judges on the highest criminal court in Texas. All Republicans, the three judges were part of a ruling that stopped Paxton fast-tracking cases of supposed voter fraud.All three judges were beaten by candidates Paxton endorsed. More

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      The not-so-Super Tuesday is over. America has two clear choices ahead | Cas Mudde

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      Not-so-Super Tuesday has made an end to two faux primaries, confirming what everyone has known for month: the presidential elections will be a repetition of those four years ago. Despite thousands of columns and hundreds of millions of campaign money, Donald Trump was unapproachable in the Republican primaries, while Joe Biden faced no real opponent and won without ever really campaigning. So, where does that leave the US?In many ways, the upcoming elections will be the same as most of the US presidential elections this century. The race will be between two unpopular candidates, who are mostly mobilizing an “anti-vote” based on a broadly shared narrative that this could be the last election to “save America”. But the situation is even worse than four years ago, because both the electoral context and political climate have worsened.US presidential elections have always been fundamentally undemocratic, because of the electoral college, an elitist safety-valve the Founding Fathers put in between the popular vote and the actual election of the president. Moreover, the voting process is extremely decentralized, which has facilitated voter intimidation and suppression, particularly targeting African Americans – but also, increasingly, Hispanics and college students.Ironically, given that one-third of Americans who believe Biden’s election was illegitimate, the 2020 presidential elections were the most “free and fair” in US history. While offering extensive new opportunities for absentee/mail voting, partly a consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic, experts declared the elections “the most secure in history”. Still, Republicans have weaponized their unfounded “stolen election” claim to limit the possibility to vote, mostly by passing restrictive voter ID and absentee/mail voting laws at the state level, and retake control of the election process.Today, more than 80% of Americans are worried about democracy in the US and about political violence in the future. In fact, this is one of the few things Democrats and Republicans (as well as independents) agree upon! Of course, they sharply disagree what is at stake and who is the main threat. Ironically, both are mostly right, largely because they stand for fundamentally contradictory Americas.The Republican claim that Democrats want to “destroy America” is based on Christian nationalism, which considers the US to be a “Christian nation”, based on the foundations of biblical values and the “traditional” (implicitly white) family. And it is true that most Democrats want to destroy this America, which might have been the reality of the country’s history, but is in clear opposition to its own (revered) constitution.In sharp contrast, most Democrats worry that another Trump presidency would mean the end of US liberal democracy, that is, the system enshrined in the constitution. And they are right too. Decades of radicalization have made the Republican party one of the most extreme far-right parties in the world, catering to an illiberal popular and media base that is largely in line with its paranoid and unhinged leader.It is too early to say which America will win in November. For now, ignore the polls, at least until October, as the key factor will be turnout, which will be largely determined by circumstances very close to election day. Like all but one presidential elections in the 21st century, the Democratic candidate will win the popular vote. But in an undemocratic regime like the US, this is no guarantee to also win the election. Given how close the results will probably be in several key states, we are in for a protracted legal battle should Trump lose, in which the increasingly partisan supreme court might have the final say.To prevent such an outcome, and ensure that US democracy prevails, at least for another four years, Democrats face a lot of challenges in the coming six months. While the Republican base is fired up, many (potential) Democrats are either “uncommitted” or weakly committed to Biden. At the same time, some liberal media, the New York Times in particular, seem determined to make the same mistake as with the “Clinton emails” in 2016, obsessing over Biden’s age and health.Let’s be clear, the age and health of both Biden and Trump are problematic for such a demanding and powerful position, but this is the choice the parties and primaries have given the US voter. Suggestions that the Democrats can still replace Biden and win against Trump are completely delusional. Not only are the Democratic electorate and politicians much more diverse and divided than the Republicans, but there is also no clear candidate who can unite them better than Biden or who has a name recognition that comes even close to that of Biden and Trump. Moreover, this new candidate would have to build their campaign and name in the shadow of a Democratic president, who has already won a significant number of delegates in the primaries.So, whether we like it or not, American voters have a choice between two very clear and different Americas, represented by two old and unpopular candidates. If Biden wins, not too much will change – except for an even more brazen insurgence from Republican-led states against the federal government. But should Trump return to the White House, the US will change fundamentally, and not for the better. Whatever (legitimate) issues potential Democratic voters have with Biden, let’s hope that they can get over them by 5 November. The fate of both the US and the world depends on it.
      Cas Mudde is the Stanley Wade Shelton UGAF professor of international affairs at the University of Georgia, and author of The Far Right Today More

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      Biden and the Democrats are sleepwalking into a potential Trump win | Osita Nwanevu

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      Barring an act from a God, who has seemingly forsaken the American electorate, Donald Trump and Joe Biden will, again, be the Republican and Democratic candidates for president. Tuesday’s results all but assure that, and they can’t really have been a surprise to anyone who has paid close attention to the campaign thus far.In fairness, most Americans still haven’t tuned in, nor many Democrats, who have spent much of the last year hoping against hope that one or more verdicts against Trump in the courts might hand them the election ⁠– and perhaps even put Trump behind bars before November. That was always a risky bet, but now the supreme court has put the trial over his attempted coup in 2020 on hold, while the other cases against him have uncertain timelines.Meanwhile, Biden’s team and Democratic officials have been telling the press that Biden’s replacement on the ticket isn’t any likelier. The race, they insist, is already on.Who’s ahead? All but a handful of high-quality national polls taken since January say it’s Trump. A New York Times poll fairly representative of the rest that drew a significant amount of media attention over the weekend put Trump ahead by five points, 48-43%, among registered voters. That’s the largest lead Trump has held in a Times poll since he launched his first presidential campaign in 2015.Meanwhile, Biden, more unpopular than ever, sits at an approval rating of 38%. Ten per cent of those who voted for him in 2020 now say they will vote for Trump. And the demographic picture the poll paints is dire ⁠– not only for Biden but perhaps for the Democratic party as a whole.Biden led strongly with women in 2020 and is now evidently tied with Trump among them; Biden won an estimated 72% of minorities without college degrees last time around and now leads by a mere six points, 47-41%. And while making broad demographic pronouncements on the basis of one poll is unwise, these results are roughly in keeping with some other data.In Michigan for instance, where much of the focus last week was on the uncommitted vote against Biden in that state’s primary, Biden has generally been polling under 70% with that state’s crucial Black electorate, which he won with over 90% of the vote, according to exit polls, in 2020. Deficits like that with previously strong Democratic constituencies go some way towards explaining why Biden, at present, seems to be losing in every swing state given current polling.The Biden campaign’s response to these numbers has been simple: all of the polls are wrong. “Polling continues to be at odds with how Americans vote, and consistently overestimates Donald Trump while underestimating President Biden,” Biden’s communications director, Michael Tyler, said over the weekend in a statement. “Whether it’s in special elections or in the presidential primaries, actual voter behavior tells us a lot more than any poll does and it tells a very clear story: Joe Biden and Democrats continue to outperform while Donald Trump and the party he leads are weak, cash-strapped and deeply divided.”As Tyler and his colleagues surely know, though, the point about “actual voter behavior” is wrong. Primary election results are not very indicative of how strong candidates will be in a general election; if they were, Trump, who didn’t even win a majority of the Republican primary vote in 2016, never would have been president. And there’s basically zero relationship between results in special elections like the one Democrats just won in New York ⁠– which involve small, unrepresentative electorates in small, unrepresentative places ⁠– and presidential election results.As flawed as they might be, general election polls are our surest guide to how the general electorate is feeling about the general election. In fact, as the political scientist David Faris noted recently, the leader at this point of the year in Real Clear Politics’ average of polls has gone on to win the election in every race since 2004 other than 2004 itself, with only a few points worth of difference between the margin and the final result.In 2004, the exception, Kerry and Bush were virtually tied in early March, around 44-44%, while Bush went on to win the popular vote by just over two points. And even that exception is reflective of a trend that can’t be of much comfort to Democrats ⁠– in every race since 2004 save 2008’s post-crash election, the Democratic candidate has performed slightly worse in November than polls at this point in the year have suggested.All told, we have every reason to believe that the hole Biden is in is real, as unfair as it might seem to his supporters. As rosily as they might evaluate his record in office so far, it looks substantially more mixed now than it did six months ago. It’s true that the economy is roaring by all available macroeconomic metrics and that Democrats under Biden have managed to pass the most expansive domestic policy agenda of any president since at least Lyndon Johnson.But it’s also true that voters have been stung by high prices and interest rates, as well as the expiration of pandemic relief programs. Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan was brave and laudable ⁠– both morally and strategically overdue. But he was hammered for it in the press and now faces a progressive insurrection over the US’s support for Israel’s inhumane offensive in Gaza so severe that the campaign is reportedly reducing large in-person events to avoid protesters.And on immigration, still at the front of mind for many voters, Biden has functionally conceded that Trump has been right about the state of the border; while immigrants are less prone to crime than the native-born population and substantially responsible for the economic boom we’re experiencing, Democrats are trying their best to outflank the right on border security and asylum, to little effect thus far, rather than countering the racist myths Trump has propagated directly and focusing on a positive immigration reform agenda.Most voters haven’t plugged into these policy debates; Biden wears his greatest liability to them on his face. According to the New York Times’ poll, 73% of registered voters, including 61% of voters who backed Biden in 2020, say he’s too old to effectively serve as president.And as much as Democrats might want to blame the media for that perception in the wake of the Robert Hur report, this is a problem many of them foresaw themselves during the last campaign. “If Biden is elected he’s going to be 82 years old in four years and he won’t be running for reelection,” one campaign adviser told Politico’s Ryan Lizza flatly in 2019; according to Lizza, four sources close to Biden at the time told him that it was “virtually inconceivable” that he would mount another campaign.Yet here we are ⁠– sitting between a Super Tuesday that Biden swept and what could be the most consequential State of the Union address in some time, given the opportunity it presents for the president both to demonstrate his lucidity and to outline, at long last, an actual plan for his next term. Previews of the speech suggest it will feature now familiar language about protecting democracy and “making the wealthy and corporations pay their fair share”, along with some proposals on the opioid epidemic and veteran care.But Biden will have to do substantially better than that to get his campaign right side up. Plainly, he’s become a symbol of our political system’s decrepitude ⁠– a stand-in for all the old men in Washington who voters believe, rightfully, can’t or won’t do much to dramatically improve their lives. He’ll have to prove to voters that he’s capable of both dreaming and doing ⁠– to sell an ambitious vision of further material progress over the next four years, not woolly rhetoric about ending polarization and bringing serenity back to politics that will leave him looking dishonest and even more ineffectual when the tenor of political life remains the same, as it surely will.Whether or not Democrats control Congress will naturally constrain whether Biden makes good on that policy agenda; but having a compelling agenda in the offing to begin with might lift the candidates he’ll depend upon in his next term to victory. All that aside, faith in Biden’s capacity to lead and accomplish will rest in some part on whether and when the situation in Gaza comes to a peaceable resolution ⁠– getting a handle on the situation and pressuring Netanyahu into ending the war would be a significant turning point in his presidency.There and elsewhere, Biden needs to find a new course. Otherwise, the election may be over before he realizes it.
      Osita Nwanevu is a Guardian US columnist More