Trump and Biden already measure their forces for the 2024 elections | International

Even in the United States, a country in a perpetual campaign, it is too early to talk about the 2024 presidential elections. Of course, it is not normal for the November 2020 elections to still take place, perhaps the hangover from a longer democracy party and history heavy. While the commission of January 6 returns again and again to the weeks that intervened between the electoral defeat, in which, according to polls, two-thirds of Republican voters have not yet turned the page on suspicions of fraud, and the attack on Capitol Hill, the two old rivals, Donald Trump and Joe Biden, plucking the daisy with their sights set on the next appointment as if there were not two and a half years left.

In one corner is Trump, whose environment has been slipping for days that the former president is determined to return to the race, and that it is only a matter of when he intends to make his intentions public. In the other, President Biden, who takes as an offense and disloyalty the insinuations that he will not be prepared to present himself and win at the polls when the time comes (a time when he will be 81 years old, compared to the 78 he will be fulfilled his potential adversary).

As for Trump’s reasons for going so far forward in his announcement (nothing prevents him from doing so, but it is an unwritten rule in Washington to wait at least for the legislative elections scheduled for next November) there are a number of confessed reasons and unspeakable. Among the first: the tycoon’s desire to take advantage of the perfect storm that is hitting Biden. With inflation and gasoline skyrocketing, his popularity ratings are rock-bottom: a poll on Tuesday found that 88% of Americans believe the country is headed in the wrong direction, an all-time high. His main legislative initiatives are paralyzed in a Senate with symptoms of gangrene; the Supreme Court, shaped in the image of his predecessor, is imposing a conservative agenda on issues such as abortion, climate change or weapons; and even in matters where things seem to be going better, potholes abound in the road, such as in the crisis, collateral to the war in Ukraine, unleashed by the arrest in Moscow of the basketball player Brittney Griner, who personally asked for help to the president in a desperate handwritten letter received Monday at the White House.

And what are Trump’s unspeakable motives? Above all, one: if he launches his career now, that could remove the possibility of an indictment for the revelations that the bipartisan commission investigating the attack on Capitol Hill is serving from Congress to the Department of Justice, for the moment, slow to take note. And not just for those investigations: a grand jury from Fulton County, the county to which Atlanta belongs, this week subpoenaed six of his closest associates (including his attorneys Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman, as well as Senator Lindsey Graham, who has announced that he will challenge that summons) as part of the investigation of the case for the pressure that Trump exerted on the electoral officials of the State of Georgia, and in particular, on the Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. The still president asked him in January 2021 in a famous recording that he seek “11,780 votes” in order to certify a victory that never existed. The procedural announcement means that the fence around Trump is tightening.

In the midst of this panorama, Biden celebrates each gesture of loyalty as a triumph: a couple of weeks ago he celebrated the announcement of Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders (his most serious rival in the primaries in 2020, who would reach 2024 at the age of 83) inviting him to dinner at the White House. It seems clear that he needs shows of support in an increasingly uncomfortable environment. Last month, New York Times He spoke with fifty active members of the Democratic Party who agreed, most of them anonymous, that Biden would do better not to appear again. This Wednesday, CNN published another report in the same direction, which described an “overwhelming feeling of frustration” among his people in Congress about the way in which he is managing the multiple crises that are piling up on him. An anonymous source defined the White House as a ship that sails “rudderless, aimless and hopeless” through the troubled waters of issues such as abortion or the control of armed violence.

There is a feeling in Washington that he should step aside to make way for a younger, more agile politician. And beyond that, too: Illinois Governor JB Pritzker said last week that he sees “certainly possible” that Biden will have to face a challenger in the 2024 primary. The 57-year-old politician and entrepreneur might be referring to himself, or to a rosary of other governors from places ranging from New Jersey (Phil Murphy) to Michigan (Gretchen Whitmer) or California, the homeland of the one who seems the best positioned: Gavin Newsom.

Newsom has starred these days in a play that has been interpreted as proof of his presidential ambitions. The politician has paid for an ad campaign under the slogan “Freedom is Under Attack in Your State” on Fox News affiliates in Florida, to attack Ron DeSantis at home. DeSantis is governor there, and one of the Republicans best placed to stand up to Trump. In his favor, the fact that if the former president were to stand for election he could only enjoy one more term in the White House by law. It is customary for voters to support their presidents with the idea that they can complete two full terms, eight years in total.

A poll of voting intentions in New Hampshire, a state that traditionally gets up early in the primary process, has given De Santis (37%) a technical tie with Trump (39%) this week.

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