Super Tuesday was Super Trump Day and the former president has his eyes clearly now on Joe Biden
Super Tuesday turned out to be Super Trump day. All the momentum in American politics is now with Donald Trump. At time of writing, in the Republican primaries Trump had smashing victories in every state except Vermont.
President Joe Biden similarly won the Democratic primaries, but the day was gold for Trump, and quite worrying for Biden.
In his powerful victory speech, Trump switched to his strongest suit, his policy differences with Biden. Rational Trump is always vastly more dangerous to Democrats than deranged Trump.
Stylistically, the two Trump personalities are as different as Bruce Banner and the Incredible Hulk, with the weird reversal that the Democrats are much more scared of Banner than they are of the Hulk.
Trump even sounded relatively presidential and wisely, perhaps, didn’t mention his only Republican opponent, Nikki Haley.
Haley deserves a word of salutation and appreciation. She’s a heroine of democracy and she refused to drop out when Trump told her to. Politicians who don’t do as they’re told are always worth a second look.
But the Republican primaries are all but over. Haley is formidable with the wider electorate but was weak with only one demographic, unfortunately that was Republican voters.
Nonetheless Trump will need a sizeable chunk of those who voted for Haley to vote for him if he is to win in November. Some Haley voters say they won’t vote for Trump.
But if Trump maintains his focus on issues rather than his customary madness, he has an excellent chance of bringing them home.
On the other hand, there were real troubles in Biden’s vote. Unlike Trump, Biden is not confronted by any serious challenger within the Democratic Party. However, in some states something like 10 or 15 per cent of voters chose “uncommitted”. These are committed Democrats, going to an internal party primary, and choosing an empty chair over the president. The two absolutely marginal actual Democrat challengers, Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson, between them often scooped up another ten per cent or more.
Thus in an uncontested primary an incumbent Democrat president, likely to face in November an opponent partisan Democrats hate, a quarter, sometimes nearly a third, of Democrat voters registered their opposition to the president.
It’s very unlikely these folks will ultimately vote for Trump, whereas some Haley voters may switch across and vote for Biden. But if even a small portion of disgruntled Democrats simply don’t bother to vote in November, that in itself could hand the election to Trump. Biden even managed to lose the territory of American Samoa.
Further, Robert F Kennedy Jnr, a former Democrat, is running as an independent and looks likely to get himself on the ballot in a number of swing states. He’s much more likely to take votes from Biden than from Trump.
This sort of candidacy has been decisive in previous US elections. In 2000, Goerge W Bush beat Al Gore by 537 votes in Florida. Ralph Nader, running as a Green, won more than 97,000 votes in Florida. It’s almost inconceivable Bush could have won if Nader hadn’t run. This was the story across several states that Bush won narrowly.
Biden’s performance as president has been so unimpressive, and his cognitive decline is now so obvious, that it’s difficult to imagine him arousing huge voter enthusiasm. As others have pointed out, Trump has a high floor of support with voters but a low ceiling. A low turnout must help Trump.
And just at the moment, Trump is ahead of Biden in national polls.
However, all that does not add up to Trump likely winning, but rather to a wide open contest. Democrats will constantly try to provoke Bruce Banner Trump into frightening Incredible Hulk Trump. And it has to be said, the record of Trump being disciplined for months at a time is not encouraging.
Trump’s choice of Vice Presidnetial running mate is critical to his chances. His instinct will be to choose a MAGA clone. That would be very dumb. He needs a new incarnation of Mike Pence, a running mate who will reassure voters.
Trump also looks to be doing better legally. Even those who don’t like Trump can see that these legal actions against him are a tremendous abuse of process. The Supreme Court voted nine to nil, including all the Democrat appointed liberal judges, that the idea that Trump could be disqualified from state ballots because, allegedly, his actions on January 6 constituted insurrection, was utterly ridiculous and deeply undemocratic.
The Supreme Court has a perfectly apolitical record in dealing with Trump. It didn’t give a nanosecond’s consideration to Trump’s absurd legal challenges to the last election result.
Trump has an increasing chance of postponing some of his legal cases until after the presidential election. As the cases wind their way up the judiciary tree in America, Trump will tend to do better. The higher the court, the less will be the role of public opinion and the demonisation of Trump.
Nonetheless, Trump being ahead in the polls means almost nothing. John McCain had a big lead over Barack Obama at one point of the campaign.
But the presidential race is absolutely wide open.
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