Biden’s campaign gaining momentum

K. P. Nayar

Strategic Analyst

NOTWITHSTANDING unfavourable nationwide opinion polls, it is worthwhile to stick one’s neck out at this stage of the 2024 presidential election cycle in the United States and assert that Joe Biden will be re-elected President in November — that is, if his health and advanced age do not create unforeseen complications during a gruelling poll campaign.

Biden’s main worry is that Democrats indifferent to his record in office may simply sit out the election and not vote.

Just as one swallow does not make a summer, one presidential caucus and one primary should not, under normal circumstances, be the basis for predicting the outcome of a national election almost 10 months away. But the 2024 election cycle is turning out to be unusual, with few precedents in US history. Therefore, the results from the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary can be extrapolated to a countrywide level for both Republicans and Democrats.

The last time a presidential nominee decisively emerged so early among a large slate of contenders was in 2004. The Democratic Party’s nomination then — as in Republican Donald Trump’s case this year — became a foregone conclusion as early as February 3. On that day, John Kerry won five of the seven Democratic primaries and two caucuses. Shortly before that, he had secured victories in both the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary. After those results, there was no one to stop Kerry from assuming the party’s mantle to seek the White House. Kerry’s sweeping victories found a place for the term ‘mini-Tuesday’ in the US political lexicon, linked to the caucuses and primaries on February 3. The term has since become archaic with changes in the American political calendar.

Incumbent President George W Bush was virtually unchallenged in the Republican Party in 2004. At any rate, Bush was at the zenith of his popularity after punishing the Taliban regime in Afghanistan with its overthrow for its role in the September 11 terror attacks. A victory in Iraq — illusory as it turned out later — where then President Saddam Hussein was deposed in a ‘shock and awe’ attack enhanced Bush’s popularity during his first presidential term. Unsurprisingly, Bush defeated Kerry handily and went on to serve his second term in the White House. History may repeat itself and Biden, too, may defeat Trump and get his second consecutive term as President.

New Hampshire was a milestone for Biden. He won about 75 per cent of the votes in the so-called Democratic primary, although he was not a candidate in New Hampshire. The primary was ‘so-called’ because it did not have sanction of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), the party’s top policymaking body. The DNC decided to skip New Hampshire owing to a dispute with the state unit of the party and made South Carolina its first-in-the-nation primary next month. In deference to his party’s national establishment, Biden agreed not to be on the ballot in the New Hampshire primary. Yet, he won three quarters of the votes in the state because Democrats wrote in his name on the ballot. Two other candidates who were in the fray got 21 and 4 per cent of the votes cast.

Biden’s main worry, as he looks at the November presidential election, is that Democrats indifferent to his record in office, his advanced age and the desire for a generational change in the White House — among several similar factors — may simply sit out the election and not vote. On the other side, conservatives are highly motivated by Trump and will make every effort to get their supporters en masse to polling booths on voting day.

Biden’s biggest achievement last week was that he disproved the notion that his supporters are not motivated. If 75 per cent of the Democrats in New Hampshire were persuaded to trudge to voting booths in the bitter cold and without campaign trappings to take the trouble of writing in the President’s name on the ballot, that is a big asset for Biden at this stage of the campaign. In every US presidential election — barring one — in the last quarter-century, Democrats have won the popular vote even when a majority eluded them in the crucial Electoral College. The only exception was Bush in 2004, propelled by regime change in Afghanistan and Iraq. If only the Democratic Party machinery can get its supporters out to vote on November 5, Biden will romp home with running mate Kamala Harris by his side. It is a big ‘if’.

Economic data released last week is another reason for Biden to seize the momentum of his campaign as the contest against Trump hots up. The data showed that the US economy performed well by present global standards, growing at 2.5 per cent last year. In the last full quarter, it grew by 3.3 per cent. An impending economic disaster in America under Biden has been Trump’s leading argument for change in his Lone Ranger bid for presidency outside the Republican Party’s conventional poll structure. He found coincidental allies in this argument among many economists. Those who predicted an imminent recession in America may now have to eat their words.

Delivering what amounted to an undisguised campaign speech, Biden’s Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in Chicago, after the data came out, that “the US economy is on a very desirable path. And my expectation is that the economy is doing very, very well.” Putting down economists who “thought a recession last year was inevitable”, Yellen said growth in wealth had regained pre-Covid levels. Petrol prices have remained low, consumer sentiment is rising and unemployment is low both in rural and urban areas, she argued. Trump may find these facts hard to counter, although the former President has no respect for facts.

On the day of the New Hampshire primary, Biden and Harris stood together and sounded their poll bugle in the electorally important state of Virginia. By choosing abortion rights as the theme of their speeches that day, the two Democratic candidates made it clear that reproductive freedom for American women would be a key theme in the months ahead as the election process intensifies. In the 2022 mid-term Congressional elections held four months after the US Supreme Court took away the rights of American women to abortion, Republicans — who are against such choice — grossly underperformed. Biden may have hit the jackpot in the choice of this campaign theme.

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