A November re-match with deep implications to America and World
Trump and Biden have something in common as they chalk up their strategies for November 5. Both are generally disliked in the American polity as several surveys have shown
Joe biden(Left) and Donald Trump(Right) /
If Super Tuesday of the primaries seasons in the United States had turned out any other way, that would have been real news.
Instead, staying in the realm of expectations the former Republican President Donald Trump trounced his only rival in the Grand Old Party taking 14 out of the 15 states in the fray and coming within striking distance of the crown.
The 45th President would now have to wait it out for a few more days when the math of the delegates will give him 1215 either on March 12 or March 19.
To Nikki Haley, a feisty Indian American challenger, the game was up some time ago. But she simply refused to bow out all that easily. True to indications she had given earlier, Super Tuesday of March 5 was not up to her expectations.
And she decided to exit the 2024 Presidential bid, but in leaving she made her point one more time: that she was not endorsing or supporting Trump, something that others so easily did knowing full well the future directions of the Republican party. This despite whether the former President gets elected on November 5 or not.
For President Joe Biden, it is a totally different story. An incumbent facing no real threat from the Democrats, he coasted along but not without being reminded every step of the way that there are real problems ahead. For starters age and memory are major handicaps to the incumbent as is reflected in a raft of polls.
If the left of center and progressives in the party are pulling away from the moderates, the Biden campaign has now a new worry on its hands: the “uncommitted” voters who turned up in large numbers in Michigan and Minnesota to protest the perceived failure of administration policy in Gaza.
Benjamin Netanyahu’s repeated snob of the Biden White House has only added to the annoyance of an administration going behind Congress and finding loopholes to militarily assist Israel.
Trump and Biden have something in common as they chalk up their strategies for November 5. Both are generally disliked in the American polity with surveys showing people would rather have a different Democratic and Republican tickets. Biden is seen as a good old man with a poor memory; but Trump is seen as a 77 year-old with a scary mindset.
The Trump camp is undoubtedly building up on the memory plank, at times mocking the President as if he would not even know what day of the week it was. But the Biden team would pose a simple question: is memory problem related to age better; or a person with a dangerous bent of mind?
The bottom line is that the November 5 outcome is for the Americans to decide. But the international system has also a stake.
In recent years and months, world capitals have seen with dismay the Biden administration’s clumsy handling of Afghanistan; and the recent atrocious silence on what is happening in the Gaza is a grim reminder of a country that is supposed to play a global role in international affairs.
That said, the Trump alternatives are not exactly giving many a good night’s sleep. It is one thing to watch a comic revolving door Presidency where senior staffers went in and out.
But it is a totally different thing to hear a former President wanting or alluding to be a dictator at least on Day One or the NATO thrown under the Russian bus for failing to cough up their perceived share of defense spending.
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