US Elections: It’s Still the Early Days

Biden is the incumbent, so it’s easier to remember why you are upset with him than why you were upset with Trump.

To some extent, you could say that Democrats are confident that former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee in the 2024 election, will campaign to reelect Democratic President Joe Biden.

Sound like a joke? A little, but the fact is that one of Biden’s great advantages is Trump’s penchant for hyperbole, for exaggeration, for self-praise.

Not even Biden in his wildest dreams can imagine Trump is going to lash out against Social Security or announce cuts. Certainly, they might be necessary, but who’s going to tell that to the millions of retirees who depend on those pensions? It’s the third rail of American politics.

Yet the business tycoon, to take one example, has already discussed the possibility of making cuts to social services, including Social Security. And of course, the Democrats have already started launching ads and memes about it.

No one is surprised. In fact, that style of campaigning is a traditional part of U.S. election politics, and don’t think that Trump and his Republican allies are helpless participants. They and their supporters are doing whatever is necessary to cement a negative image of Biden and the Democrats. And if they’re not doing that, their promotion of the idea that Democrats protect immigrants, who, in Trump’s words, “poison the blood” of Americans, says so.

That may help Trump in the eyes of his supporters, who appear to make up 30% of the electorate and, for now, seem to give him a base that allows him to believe he can win in November.

But his melodramatic remarks, saying he intends to set himself up as a “dictator for a day” to address problems he believes need a forceful solution, may turn into his main problem.

With a long eight months to go before the election on Nov. 5, there is plenty of room for error.

Biden’s handicap is both the idea that he is too old and too weak to govern a country like the U.S., with big problems in so many arenas. The election will present his every act during the last three years, his deals and his mistakes, in the most catastrophic and negative way possible.

The country’s economy, with good numbers in “macro” terms, but not on an individual level thanks to inflation, do not help him.

And indeed, he is the incumbent; it is easier to remember why you dislike him than to remember why you disliked Trump when he was in office.

But as he makes ambiguous promises, such as possible cuts to Social Security, or asserting there will be physical violence if he is not elected, Trump and his ilk are merely confirming suspicions and fears: that he will forcefully introduce anti-abortion and anti-sexual minority measures, religious education and make racist formulations. Thus, for the moment, it would be a mistake to be guided by today’s polls. There is still a choice.