For an event that supposedly fundamentally shook up the 2024 presidential race by exposing Joe Biden’s senility, the campaign debate on June 27 has had little impact on the polls in the United States. Trump has slightly widened his lead over Biden, but it remains within the margin of error. Trump’s lead on average is now around the same as it was back in March. In seven key battleground states, according to NBC, Trump’s average lead has actually narrowed from three points to two points — but he leads in five of the seven states.
There’s thus some basis for Biden insisting he can still beat Trump. But what does seem to have happened is the choking off of Biden’s momentum prior to the debate, when he was slowly grinding down the small but persistent lead Trump has held for most of the year — in the weeks before the debate, Biden had actually overtaken Trump on national polling averages, if not in battleground states.
But now if, as he says he intends to, Biden continues in the campaign, he’ll be just one, literal, stumble away from oblivion and handing the world another four years of a man who says he intends to be a dictator, sell out America’s allies, start a global trade war and jail his political opponents.
Biden is also, at 81, well beyond the average lifespan of white American males. He’ll be nearing 86 in the last months of a second term. The possibility of his dying in office, or of being incapacitated, like Woodrow Wilson or Churchill, is substantial. American voters are being asked to sign up to the risk of a president who may not see out his term.
Biden’s stated motivation for entering the 2020 presidential race was to stop Trump from permanently changing the United States; the then former vice president cited Trump declaring that there were “fine people on both sides” about neo-Nazis and those protesting against them at the “Unite The Right” rally in Charlottesville in 2017. Not merely was Biden able to oust Trump from the White House, his presidential term has been based around addressing many of the economic drivers of support for Trump.
For example, while Trump is now promising an all-out trade war with China with a 60% tariff on every Chinese import — which would send US inflation soaring — he’s partly had to do so to differentiate himself from Biden, who not merely inherited and retained many of Trump’s own tariffs on China and even expanded some, but developed a whole industry policy around onshoring of high-tech and renewables manufacturing designed to strategically damage China’s trade competitiveness and potential dominance of key markets.
The result of the CHIPS Act and the Inflation Reduction Act has been that manufacturing employment in the United States has surged. Manufacturing jobs were actually declining under Trump in the months before the pandemic set in in 2020, but they’ve since bounced back to new record highs of nearly 13 million under Biden. And despite high inflation — it’s now down to 3-3.5%, which is still higher than in the Trump years — US workers have had real wages growth for 18 months. Unemployment only just edged over 4% earlier this year after running well below 4% since the end of the pandemic.
If Biden had chosen not to run for reelection, declaring he’d left the economy in good shape for blue-collar workers and inviting a new generation of Democrats to contest the nomination, he could have reasonably declared mission accomplished. The Democratic field would have been led by Vice President Harris, who has national name recognition and who is now appearing in polls as far more competitive against Trump than previously thought. Instead, Biden has offset all the political weaknesses of Trump with his own palpable frailty.
Against that, it’s worth noting that if delivering an economy with strong employment, real wages growth, growing manufacturing and expansion in strategic industries isn’t enough to dislodge a large section of Trump voters, what would be? The Trump message is one of victimhood, anger and resentment directed at African Americans, liberals, woman, “elites”, trans people, Muslims, asylum seekers and anyone else who can be blamed for any social ill. If an old white guy demonstrating that the economic system can deliver for Trump voters isn’t sufficient to shift them, then perhaps America really is doomed to angry and hateful division.
Should Biden step down and let another Democrat challenge Trump? Is there anything anyone can do to win back the Trump base? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
