Polls this week showing Donald Trump leading US President Joe Biden in next year's presidential election have sent a chill down the collective spine of the liberal establishment, with fears that democracy itself could be in danger.
Unlike in 2016, when Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton came as a complete surprise, this time he’s akin to an onrushing steam train that everybody seems at a loss about how to avoid.
Biden seems to have done a reasonable job as president. The economy is in decent shape. Inflation is down. Unemployment is at record lows. He's poured billions into an ambitious infrastructure programme ranging from rebuilding roads, bridges, ports and airports to fighting pollution, providing clean water and access to affordable internet for every household. He got on top of the Covid-19 pandemic after Trump’s cavalier handling of the disease led to thousands of unnecessary deaths. In foreign policy he's smothered his allies with love and, crucially, he's been steadfast in his support for Ukraine’s struggle against Russia's invasion.
With his record, Biden should be showing a flawed candidate like Trump a clean pair of heels
Trump, on the other hand, is permanently engaged in tackling his legal woes, which include criminal charges for stoking the January 6 storming of the Capitol by his supporters, his attempt to overturn the results of the presidential election, payment to a porn star to keep her quiet and a civil claim from a woman who alleges he raped her.
Any other candidate with half Trump’s legal troubles would have been dead and buried politically by now. But Trump seems to gather more support with every charge.
The polls put Trump either neck-and-neck with Biden or crucially ahead in the battleground states, which are key to deciding the election. How so? With his record, Biden should be showing a flawed candidate like Trump a clean pair of heels. Trump is corrupt, a disrupter and a liar to boot, who seems to be in it for himself.
The trouble, though, seems not to be Biden’s agenda but the man himself. Voters think he's too old. A fixture of the Washington establishment — he spent 36 years in the Senate and two terms as Barack Obama’s vice-president — Biden turns 81 next week and would be hugging 83 by the beginning of his second term. Ronald Reagan, so far the oldest president, was 74 at the beginning of his second term.
Though Biden is only three years older than Trump, voters seem more concerned about his age than his opponent’s. And that has a lot to do with the effectiveness of the Republican Party’s propaganda machine. Having failed to exploit weaknesses in his policies, they've made a big issue of his age. Biden’s unsteady gait — he's often been caught on camera taking a tumble — and a proneness for political gaffes have bolstered their message that he's too old, and possibly getting senile.
The issue is unnerving some Democrats who are agitating for a change. But their dilemma is: do they challenge Biden for the leadership and risk dividing the party so close to an election that has all the makings of a nail-biter, or do they ignore the drumbeat about his age and proceed with him as their standard-bearer, despite the even scarier prospect of inadvertently clearing Trump’s path back to the White House?
Whatever the decision, it will have ramifications beyond the US.
The Democrats have been here before. In 2014, many pleaded with justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, an icon among feminists and in poor health at the time, to resign from the Supreme Court so that Obama could appoint her replacement. With the Democrats controlling the Senate, it was going to be a slam dunk. She refused, apparently hoping to give Hillary Clinton — who at the time looked a shoo-in to succeed Obama — the singular honour of appointing her successor.
But the Republicans went to work on Clinton, manufacturing a scandal on her alleged complicity in the killing of American diplomats by an Islamic group in Benghazi, Libya. She lost to Trump. Ginsburg did not resign, hoping to outlive Trump’s presidency. Unfortunately, she died two months before the 2020 elections and Trump was able to replace her with a right-wing zealot, thus reinforcing the court’s conservative majority.
The Republicans are adept at throwing mud that sticks
That majority immediately overturned a 50-year-old law protecting a woman’s right to an abortion. For the Republicans it was a historic victory, but it has so far proved to be an electoral sticky wicket.
The Republicans are adept at throwing mud that sticks. In the 1988 presidential election, George HW Bush, trailing Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis, his Democratic rival, by 17 points in the polls, ran an ad about a black man serving a life sentence for murder in Dukakis's state who went on a criminal rampage, including armed robbery and the rape of a white woman, while on a furlough from prison. It created a stir. But Dukakis refused to respond in kind. He went on to lose in a landslide.
Such events still haunt the Democrats. Part of the problem is the fact that Kamala Harris, the vice-president, can't seem to cut the mustard. Many voters aren't enthused about the possibility of her taking over should anything happen to Biden. But a vengeful Trump, should he win, could do a lot of damage. Clinton this week likened him to Adolf Hitler, warning his re-election could be the death knell for American democracy.
The world could be in peril too. The Nato alliance would unravel. Ukraine would be toast. He would hand it to Vladimir Putin on a platter. South Africa, too, would not be immune from his unwanted attention. And our mutual admiration for Putin would count for nothing.
But many still believe it's too early to worry about polls. As one optimistic Biden supporter put it, polls don't vote.
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