Although supposedly there is pre-campaign and campaign, with launching of official candidacies, debates, primary seasons and fight between nominees, The United States lives in a permanent electoral cycle. The one of 2024, for example, was opened even since Joe Biden took office due to Donald Trump’s resistance to accept the results and due to the assault on the Capitol, and has already been marked by other moments such as the historic decision of the Supreme Court last summer. to repeal the constitutional protection of abortion. Nothing, however, has been comparable to the criminal indictment this week of Trump, a former president and candidate for the Republican nomination for the presidential election next year. And both he and his announced and potential rivals in the internal struggle, but also the Democrat Biden, are moving right now with tactics and strategies marked by that historic imputation.
Biden has chosen to keep public silence about the events of the last week. White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre hides behind saying that they do not comment on open court cases. And Michael Gerhardt, an expert in Constitutional Law at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill told ‘Newsweek’ that if Biden entered the conversation “it would help politicize it, and that would play in favor of Trump & rdquor ;.
Clearly more considerations enter into Biden’s discussions, and a vital one is 2024an election in which He has not yet announced that he will seek re-election, although all signs are that it will. The question is when, and imputation can contribute to extend that moment, until summer or even until autumn, as reported this week by Axios. Because if Biden were to announce in April, as Obama did in 2011, he might already start raising funds, and remove the shadows of lack of enthusiasm surrounding his potential re-election quest, but that’s not what the president, and his strategists, they consider most important at this time.
An exercise in contrasts
The president, who is traveling to Ireland this month, for now prefers exploit the image as an active presidentdedicated to rule. It also has a difficult time ahead of it, as the open war over the refusal of the Republicans to raise the debt ceiling will reach its bloodiest and most dangerous phase in the summer. And he strives to also convey a image of stability in the face of chaos, division and the circus which, as was seen again this week, often surround Trump.
Entering the impeachment conversation would also have no positive counterparts for Biden and the Democrats. The silence will allow them to keep their distance in the event that prosecutor Alvin Bragg does not end up convicting Trump in a process that, in any case, will last for months and enter 2024. And like practically all observers, they conclude that the indictment today reinforces Trump’s options of being a Republican candidate, but they also believe that the presidential elections would be much more difficult for the ex-president than the primaries.
“The political arithmetic It is that Trump cannot be elected if he does not get people who did not vote for him in 2020 to do so in 2024, and the fact that he is indicted and faces other investigations will make it very difficult for him to find those new voters,” he summarized in ‘The Washington Post ‘ Geoff Garing, a Democratic polling specialist. And even the Republican strategist Karl Rove, in a column in ‘The Wall Street Journal’, pointed to that difficult math of Trump to polls among independent.
Although in one of these polls only 31% approve of Biden in the economy and only 27% in border management, in another 40% (in addition to 16% of Republicans) they approve of the fact that he has been accused. In one of CNN the percentage rose to 60%. And they are bad numbers for Trump, which in 2016 won 48% of the independent vote and in 2020 fell to 41% in that group. “Paying hush money is not a winning issue,” Rove noted.
His imputation, moreover, arrived on the same day that the two progressive victories that demonstrate Democratic potential at the polls. One was the choice of a Democrat as mayor in Chicagoone of the Big cities vilified by Trump and the Republicans for the supposed negative effect of Democratic policies. Another, the victory of one progressive justice swinging the balance of the Supreme Court in Wisconsin to the left, recalling the rejection at the polls of setbacks in rights such as abortion and the Democratic advance in swing states.
Reinforced in the primaries
For now, however, the path to Trump’s presidential nomination has been cleared. He has so far succeeded in turning what for countless others would have been a political death sentence into an asset. From weakened against potential rivals like Ron DeSantis, he has become the undisputed leader. And as Republican strategist Alex Conant has told Bloomberg, “This indictment ensures that Trump will be the center of history in the near future& rdquor ;, something that has always played in your favor and which now does so clearly in the primary fight.
In addition to the well-known injections of millions of dollars in their coffers (10 in just four days), the polls continue to show the boost that the imputation has given to his candidacy. The main rivalslike DeSantis, in order not to alienate their bases, have boxed in in an untenable situation for them, attacking like Trump his imputation as a political persecution but afraid of attacking him personally. and they repeat mistakes what Trump’s rivals did in 2015 and 2016, with everyone for the moment waiting for him to fall under the weight of this or new accusations, or waiting for someone else to attack him. In the graphic image used in The Atlantic magazine by Matt Mackowiak, a Republican adviser and party chairman in a Texas county, “everyone wants to be the last one to eat the crocodile”.
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It remains to be seen if the “momentum” of Trump. Rove, in his article in the ‘Journal’, recalled that “what goes up fast tends to go down fast & rdquor ;. But Trump breaks trends.
The first Republican primary debates will arrive in August. The first dates in Iowa and New Hampshire won’t be until January or February. And for now Trump has the advantage. “With every opportunity that the party has had to move in a different direction, it has gone further into the path of Trump & rdquor ;, recalled in ‘The Atlantic’, Stuart Stevens, who was chief strategist for Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign in 2012 And in the same magazine, Republican Party adviser John Thomas used another devastating image. “Is almost like an abusive relationship”, he said. “Several segments of MAGA (Make America Great Again) voters recognize that they want to give it up, they’re willing to, but they’re just not ready to take the plunge.”.