The stage is set: Trump v Biden

After Bernie Sanders’s much anticipated abandonment of his presidential campaign, the stage is set for Joe Biden to be the Democratic Party’s nominee to take on Donald Trump in November. Despite Mr Biden’s astonishing political resurrection in last month’s Super Tuesday primaries across 14 states, the challenge he faces will be extremely difficult. He will be 78 in November — older even than Ronald Reagan when he left the White House. And unlike “the great communicator”, Mr Biden appears to have increasing difficulty communicating effectively with voters.

The polls are not without encouragement for Mr Biden, despite Mr Trump’s derisory dismissal of him as “Sleepy Joe” and the President’s attempts to portray Mr Biden as way past it — even though Mr Trump, 73, is no spring chicken, either. Of six recent polls, only one, Fox News, had a race between Mr Biden and Mr Trump tied at 42 all. Others showed Mr Biden in the lead; CNN by 11 points, Monmouth by four, Quinnipiac by eight, CNBC by five and The Economist/YouGov by six.

As Cameron Stewart wrote on Friday, to stand a chance against Mr Trump, Mr Biden will need to win over moderates as well as Senator Sanders’s left-wing supporters. In the Democratic Party’s race, those so-called “Bernie Bros” mobilised in their tens of thousands to back Senator Sanders and his “democratic socialist” platform. Should Mr Biden move too far to the left, however, he would antagonise middle-ground voters and give Mr Trump the ammunition he is seeking to portray him as a dangerous left-wing progressive who would lay waste to the US’s economic success. Mr Biden also stands accused of moving too far to the left during the Democratic nomination campaign, proposing tax increases totalling $US3.4 trillion ($5.3 trillion) over 10 years, twice what Hillary Clinton suggested in 2016 when she lost to Mr Trump. The President is brazenly bidding for supporters of Senator Sanders’s populism to join him rather than vote for Mr Biden. In that seemingly unlikely pitch, Mr Trump is buoyed by estimates that in 2016, 12 per cent of Senator Sanders’s backers voted for Mr Trump against Mrs Clinton.

The great unknown in the election is likely to be the impact of COVID-19 and Mr Trump’s management of it. His initial response was haphazard and at times incomprehensible. At first he downplayed the virus, comparing it to the flu. Even as its catastrophic impact became clear, he maintained restrictions could be lifted and America could “get back to work” after Easter, a statement he was forced to reverse. But he has since shown the kind of leadership that was needed. Polls indicate that in deliberately assuming the mantle of a “wartime” leader waging a battle for survival, he has won significant backing, even among Democrats. As of Friday night, 468,895 Americans had contracted COVID-19, with a death toll of 16,697. Mr Trump’s ability to lead the nation through the recovery phase will be decisive in the November election outcome.

Despite Mr Biden’s decades at the centre of power in Washington, DC, he will face an uphill battle to overcome the ruthless, barnstorming campaign style Mr Trump used so effectively in 2016. From a distance, Australians might have reason to be grateful the US electoral system is not our system.