US election: Biden himself is the chief danger to the Democrats

When is news not news? Well, obviously, when Joe Biden and Donald Trump win their respective primaries in “races” where their chief competitors seem to be themselves. Or at least that is what happened in Michigan on Tuesday, leaving us with a pair of results that tell us what we already knew. Biden took 81 per cent of the Democratic vote and Trump won with 68 per cent of the Republican vote.

Beneath those figures, there are marginally interesting things to say, particularly about a protest vote over Biden’s response to Israel’s actions in Gaza. The campaign to get voters to choose “uncommitted” was stronger than anticipated and saw 11 per cent of his vote stripped away. That might prove significant if the same political reality exists come November, but the nature of the contest will be much different. It’s easier to lodge a protest when the outcome is already determined; hard to justify if the outcome would be the victory of an opponent as toxic as Donald Trump.

Nevertheless, right now the result is a reminder that Biden cannot afford to see his vote fracture, especially in swing states where there are college towns filled with idealist students happy to ignore the bigger picture for a single issue. The Biden team is already working to remedy that, admitting that their response to events in the Middle East was lacking. Biden has a few months to thread that particularly tricky needle.

Meanwhile, behind the Trump number is the continued “challenge” from Nikki Haley which might be many things, but it is still unlikely to be a serious path to the nomination. She has now lost the backing of the Koch brothers but that impact on her campaign finances does not yet look like it’s going to be enough to see her withdraw from the race. She’s declared her intention to make it through to Super Tuesday, which takes place on 5 March, but at this stage, it’s not even apparent what her withdrawal could look like. Would it be an overt statement about suspending her campaign or will she simply continue to limp on with a diminished footprint on the ground? It certainly looks like she’s simply there to be the last person standing should anything happen to the frontrunner before the Republican convention. 

It’s a funny kind of logic. In one sense, she’s filling an obvious gap in the Republican race for some Other to stand against Trump. But in the long term, the logic remains questionable. When the Age of Trump finally comes to an end, the landscape will look very different. Haley is engaged in a game of bluster which will be forgotten. Serious players are not in the game at this point. When their hibernation comes to an end, it’s dubious if Haley will be considered a serious challenger.

If the news this week wasn’t much news, then, what does constitute news? What did feel significant? Well, a couple of events happened which are worth highlighting. The first was a gaffe by the President which highlights the Democrats’ chief danger in this election is the President himself.

Biden was on late-night TV this week in the increasingly apparent ramping up of his campaign. He appeared on the Seth Myers show on NBC but, after the taping, the President went with Myers to the Van Leeuwen’s ice cream shop in New York City, where the pair were seen eating ice cream cones. Reporters shouted questions to Biden, as they always do, and if Biden had any sense (which he rarely seems to have) he’d have kept quiet. 

The sensible thing would have been to avoid making a headline statement about Gaza whilst holding mint chocolate chip ice cream. But Biden will always do Biden.

“I hope by the end of the weekend,” said Biden, almost drooling behind the cone. “My national security advisor tells me we’re close. We’re close. It’s not done yet. My hope is by next Monday, we’ll have a ceasefire…”

The statement, though welcome (but also increasingly sounding premature), has rightly drawn criticism for being tone-deaf, which is very much a Biden trait. It’s become a stock joke about Biden that he can never walk away from a microphone without turning a win into a loss and here he was again completely fluffing his lines.

He could have handed the ice cream to Myers and stepped away to engage with the reporters. He could have simply ignored the questions and chosen a better place to talk about the crisis in the Middle East, perhaps somewhere where he wasn’t surrounded by ice creams with titles like “Leo’s Lizard Lunch”, “Lemon Poppy Seed Muffin”, and “Glass Onion”.

But to see the President of the United States holding an ice cream in front of his mouth when speaking about Gaza was just dumb. There is no other word for it. D. U. M. B.

Being even-handed when analysing this kind of gaffe is always fraught. Trump made a few gaffes of his own this week, but none made the headlines in the same way, and one that did, wasn’t a gaffe. He was accused of forgetting his wife’s name, calling Melania “Mercedes”, when in fact, he was addressing Mercedes Schlapp, who was sitting in the audience. She is a former White House advisor and wife of the CPAC organiser. Melania continues to be absent from the campaign, though around that there’s very little mystery.

We live in such divisive times that it’s hard to be objective about a race that is not always reported objectively. It sometimes makes for interesting bits of pre-election fluff such as one that came via another late-night talk show host. 

Jimmy Kimmel had a segment on his show that was worth watching simply to underscore the illogical nature of US politics right now. He sent a member of his staff out onto the streets to ask Republicans about their opinions of Biden. The staffer deliberately asked about actions that Biden had reportedly done, whilst using facts from Trump’s life.

In each case, the voter condemned Biden according to the usual language used by conservative media. When presented with the corrected question: what they thought about Donald Trump despite his having done these things, the voters rationalise wildly to argue the very opposite.

“What did you think when Joe Biden suggested that Covid could be cured by shining a bright light inside the body?” asked the reporter.

“It is very sad that Joe Biden is clearly a dementia patient,” came the reply.

When the question was changed to “What did you think when Donald Trump suggested that Covid could be cured by shining a bright light inside the body?” The supporter answered: “It depends what that technology is… That’s a broad spectrum because you have MRI machines, CT machines, infrared… It just depends on the context of that.”

It might not be a particularly profound insight into this election yet in a very crude way it cuts through a lot of the guff being spoken. Huge portions of the electorate are immune to arguments and have already decided. In truth, so have parts of the media. Fox News did not cover itself in glory when it recently emerged that Alexander Smirnov, an FBI informant and key witness in the House’s investigation into Hunter Biden, had been arrested and charged with lying, and might well have had ties with Russia. They had previously covered the Smirnov story with effusive praise for his reliability.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

This week’s results did at least underscore how November will come down to two issues within the few swing states: turnout and that small percentage of the electorate who are still undecided. The former looks likely to favour the Democrats. Abortion should still energise their base and one key takeaway from the Republican race is that there’s a distinct cooling of enthusiasm in Trump’s vote. As for the latter, polling still seems to be favouring the former president, but this is all smoke coming off the top of the bonfire. It is still far too early to properly measure the heat.

@DavidWaywell

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