America’s next presidential election is 13 months away. But while the first Republican primary votes will not be cast until the dead of winter, the last week of September 2023 may come to be seen as the moment when the extraordinary implications of the fight for the White House crystallized.
President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, the GOP front-runner, hit swing states as though they were in the race’s final stretch rather than its prologue. And the futile attempts of Trump’s GOP rivals to break through at the GOP presidential debate in California only cemented a growing impression that theirs is a race for second place.
But recent days have also revealed a more profound truth about the 2024 election that Biden sought to highlight in a speech on Thursday in which he warned, “There’s something dangerous happening in America.” Trump, if he heads the GOP ticket, will not just be running for a non-consecutive second term shadowed by four criminal trials that include charges alleging abuses of power during and after his tumultuous first spell in the Oval Office.
Through his rhetoric and actions, Trump is leaving no doubt that his menace to the country’s democratic guarantees and constitutional institutions has not dimmed during his exile from power. In a tight election, amid questionable economic conditions and with the normality that Biden promised in 2020 still fleeting, the threat may be greater than ever.
Both Trump and Biden showed up in Michigan courting blue-collar votes this week. The president also headed West to Arizona, a state he barely won in 2020, which is home to fast expanding suburbs that are transforming the US political map and where he must draw huge turnout to win back the White House next year.
After weeks of Democratic handwringing about his chances next year and an unflattering public debate about his…
Read the full article here
Leave a Reply