Donald Trump unites Republicans but a Joe Biden exit would suddenly alter the contest
No US presidential race in the past four decades has carried this much uncertainty at this point. The prospect of Joe Biden’s withdrawal is throwing both parties off their footing.
A US presidential election that had been stable for many months has turned into a yawning mismatch in energy and expectations, with Republicans exiting their national convention exhilarated and unified behind their ticket and Democrats in crisis over theirs.
Friday US time brought calls from several more Democrats for President Joe Biden to end his candidacy, pressure that he and his aides have publicly resisted even as much of the party has become resigned to the idea that he will have to step aside.
By the afternoon, more than 30 Democratic House of Representatives and Senate members had called for Mr Biden to withdraw.
Republicans, meanwhile, were still exultant that former president Donald Trump had survived last weekend’s assassination attempt – an episode he dramatically recounted in a Thursday night acceptance speech that raised questions about whether he could be the more disciplined and unifying candidate his campaign has promised.
Mr Trump, holding the podium for more than 90 minutes, initially appealed for national unity before departing from his written script and airing familiar, partisan grievances that denigrated Mr Biden and other Democrats.
No US presidential race in the past four decades has carried this much uncertainty so deep into the campaign season.
The prospect of Mr Biden’s withdrawal is throwing both parties off their footing, leaving Republicans to wonder whether their enthusiasm advantage would wane if a different Democrat, most likely Vice President Kamala Harris, were to become the nominee.
“If and when they make the switch, everything is going to change,” warned Republican Governor Chris Sununu of New Hampshire. “It’s going to get very close in a lot of those tighter states.”
Democrats could wind up with “a strong potential ticket that just surprises and re-energises the party”, depending on Ms Harris’s choice of running mate in that situation, said Sununu, speaking at a Politico forum.
Independent voters might reward the party for breaking free of the widely disliked options of Mr Biden and Mr Trump, he said.
Democrats were trying to sort through the advantages and risks of turning to Ms Harris, the daughter of Indian and Jamaican immigrants, who is the nation’s first Black vice president and first of South Asian descent.
One possibility is that, as the nominee, she revives support among the young, Black and Latino voters who traditionally back Democrats but have resisted Mr Biden. Alternatively, she could inherit the low approval ratings and policy liabilities that voters attach to the President. Polling offers evidence for both theories.
Some Black Democratic voters were sceptical that Americans would support a Black woman. “In the United States, they wouldn’t vote for Hillary,” said Linda Saulsby, a 77-year-old retired executive from Cave Creek, Arizona, referring to Hillary Clinton, the party’s nominee in 2016. “They are for sure not going to vote for a Black female.”
Corrine Armstrong, a 43-year-old nurse in Savannah, Georgia, said Ms Harris couldn’t win, because the Biden administration didn’t help her build enough of a public profile among voters. “They did her a disservice by not putting her in the forefront all these years, so they don’t know her, and it’s going to be a fail,” said Ms Armstrong.
The events of recent weeks have added to Democratic fears that their party, trailing Mr Trump all year, was suffering from a cascade of events that might put victory out of reach.
As Mr Trump racked up good news – the Supreme Court granted him broad protection against criminal prosecution for deeds in office, and a judge dismissed charges that he illegally retained classified documents – Mr Biden faced defections from allies and donors, as well as slippage in polls of formerly safe states.
Mr Biden, his party fractured over whether he is too politically and physically weak to remain a candidate, cancelled public appearances after testing positive on Wednesday for Covid.
For some Democrats, trepidation over their weakened prospects turned into indignation. “I’m very nervous about what’s at stake … and I’m worried that maybe we are placing the feelings of one person in front of potential outcomes for the rest,” said Stacie Sanchez Hare, a social worker in San Antonio.
The attempted assassination of Mr Trump rallied Republicans behind him, with some delegates at the national convention wearing bandages on their right ear in sympathy with the former president, who was nicked by a bullet.
“I mean yesterday, when he came in, they just flashed his picture with that bandage on his ear, and it really brought me to tears,” said Shannon Haynes, a delegate from Tennessee.
She called the assassination attempt “the worst thing that could have happened, but I think it’s going to be very beneficial for the party. I think it’s really brought everybody together to see him stand up after that happened and pump that fist and encourage everyone.”
“If the election were held today, it’d be a landslide,” said delegate Ross Berry of New Hampshire on the convention floor.
Similar GOP optimism was evident in battleground states. In Arizona, Republican Dave Giles said Mr Trump’s chances of victory are now “up as high as they can ever go”. In eastern Pennsylvania, Trump supporter Michael Kiefer said his candidate was “gaining ground and gaining more support”.
One caution for the party was Mr Trump’s handling of his convention speech, in which he strayed from his initial effort to cast himself as a unifying figure.
Reverting to his practice of denigrating adversaries, he called the former Democratic House speaker “crazy Nancy Pelosi”. He said that if damage to the country from the 10 worst presidents was added together, “they will not have done the damage that Biden has done”. Some delegates grew restless as the speech stretched on.
Bob Kunst, 82, a Trump supporter and retired marketing executive from Miami Beach, Florida, said he enjoyed the speech, particularly Mr Trump’s recounting of the assassination attempt. But Mr Trump pressed the limits of his audience’s attention, Mr Kunst realised, as he watched from a bar on the outskirts of the convention in Milwaukee.
After about half an hour, “everybody was applauding and all of a sudden, people started doing their own conversations because they’ve heard it all before”, he said.
In four of the past five presidential elections, the party with an enthusiasm advantage in Wall Street Journal/NBC News polling has gone on to win. (The exception was in 2012, when then-president Barack Obama trailed his GOP challenger by six percentage points in the share of party members who rated themselves at the highest levels of enthusiasm to vote.)
That record is an ill omen for Democrats this year. At this point in 2020, Democrats rating themselves as highly motivated to vote outnumbered Republicans by seven percentage points, Journal/NBC polling found. This year, Republicans led in enthusiasm by five points, NBC found. Voters under age 30, a Democratic-leaning group, showed lower enthusiasm than in the prior three elections.
“Democrats are right to be distraught and depressed,” said GOP pollster Bill McInturff, who worked on the NBC surveys.
Recent history also suggests that parties divided during the convention period struggle in the home stretch to the election. In 1976, president Gerald Ford tussled at the Republican convention for the last delegates needed to win a majority over Ronald Reagan, who was just building his conservative revolution.
Four years later, President Jimmy Carter beat back a serious challenge at the Democratic convention from senator Ted Kennedy. Both Mr Ford and Mr Carter went on to lose.
“Republicans have the enthusiasm advantage now. It’s just not clear they have a turnout advantage,” said Nathan Gonzales, a nonpartisan analyst, suggesting that dispirited Democrats could nonetheless vote.
“An unenthusiastic vote counts the same as an enthusiastic vote. Democrats just need Democrats to turn out, even if they’re not enthusiastic about it.”
Journal polling in late June and early July found Ms Harris with a public image about as tarnished as Mr Biden’s. About 35 per cent of voters viewed either one favourably, and slightly more had an unfavourable opinion of Mr Biden than of the vice president.
NBC polling conducted before the convention and assassination attempt found both Mr Biden and Ms Harris trailing Mr Trump by two percentage points in head-to-head match-ups, but with slightly different coalitions.
Ms Harris won more support than Mr Biden from Black voters, whose support for Mr Biden this year has lagged behind 2020 levels, and among voters who pick a third-party candidate when given that option. The two Democrats drew roughly the same share of white voters.
A party draws its most ardent supporters to its national convention, whom it then relies on to fund and operate the voter-mobilisation machinery needed to win in November.
Expectations among the delegates were running so high during the week that Mr Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr, cautioned against letting the rallying effect of the failed assassination attempt turn into overconfidence.
“I see the commentary: ‘Oh, it’s over, and they have it in the bag,’ ” he told an audience on the sidelines of the convention. “Nothing is over. Nothing is in the bag. We have to take all of our energy and go full speed, full pedal to the metal until November 5.”
Tarini Parti, Dante Chinni and Mariah Timms contributed to this article.
The Wall Street Journal
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