Biden's mental decline and Trump's legal woes are part of a disheartening yet intriguing political landscape. LARRY DONNELLY, Boston-born lecturer at the University of Galway, reports on the complex dynamics of the forthcoming presidential election
ASSOCIATED PRESS/NORC Research Centre polling on November’s presidential election in the United States is as depressing as it is fascinating. Two-thirds of Americans would prefer “someone new” to be on the ballot rather than President Joe Biden and Donald Trump. 60 per cent regard Trump negatively; 54 per cent have an unfavourable opinion of Biden.
This poll was taken prior to the recent report of special counsel Robert Hur in which he opined that Biden, at 81, is a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” whose slipups “appear consistent with diminished faculties and faulty memory.” Nonetheless, it also found that 76per cent of registered voters have either major or moderate concerns that the incumbent president does not have the necessary physical or mental health to serve a second term. That figure has probably ticked upward following Hur’s devastating, albeit unscientific, finding.
And then there is Trump. What else can be said about the man whose outrageous, offensive public pronouncements include his long-running practice of “grabbing ’em [women] by the pussy” and his February 10 suggestion as to what Russia should do to his country’s allies who do not pay their NATO dues in full: “No, I would not protect you. I would encourage them [Russia] to do whatever the hell they want.”
And that is before considering the swirling clouds of legal trouble the bombastic 77-year-old former star of The Apprentice faces. There are penalties running into the hundreds of millions of dollars in the wake of rulings in civil court proceedings. And he will stand trial in the coming months in four criminal prosecutions. His legal team must defend their client against an astonishing 91 felony charges. The first of these is scheduled to kick off on March 25th in New York.
Three questions are posed to me repeatedly here in Ireland by avid observers of all things American about this, frankly, crazy milieu. Are these two men the best an extraordinary nation of 350 million diverse and talented people can put forward? How could and why would the Democrats and Republicans select two deeply unpopular individuals? Is there any way a Biden vs. Trump rematch can be avoided?
I will try – key word – to respond briefly to all three here. On the first, the simple answer is no. There is an abundance of capable, articulate, appealing, younger women and men in both parties who would be superior standard bearers to Trump and Biden. The widespread narrative that “they must have no one else” is patently false.
But it leads to the second query. To an extent, it is inexplicable on both sides. Biden, as the incumbent president, holds a tremendous amount of sway over his party and its infrastructure at national, state and local levels. Notwithstanding his low approval numbers, he did defeat Trump and can point to a litany of legislative accomplishments while in the White House.
That said, his mental and physical decline have been apparent for some time now and were the subject of much fretting and conjecture by prominent Democratic elected officials and strategists behind closed doors. If Biden had decided to announce that he would not seek a second term and would instead pass the torch to a new generation – having vanquished a predecessor who arguably posed an existential threat to American democracy and having taken the temperature down in the US – his place in the history books would have been secure.
Why the congressional leadership, the Democratic National Committee and big campaign donors have acceded to Biden’s misguided ambition to serve a second term is, in an objective sense, an unsolvable mystery. In reality, though, it flows from deep flaws in the inner workings of the party and in American politics more broadly. Without wishing to sound glib, money talks and insiders have too much influence.
On the other side of the aisle, commentators in the US and further afield contend that Donald Trump executed a hostile takeover of the GOP in 2016. This is wide of the mark; in fact, the traditional brand of conservatism espoused by the likes of John McCain and Mitt Romney was past its sell by date. Grassroots Republicans no longer share the sunny disposition of Ronald Reagan. They lament the state of a country they no longer fully recognise and want to turn back the clock.
Trump was cute and cagey enough to identify the increasing distance between the sentiments on the ground and the posturing of the elites. He has been messaging accordingly and effectively ever since: America First, Make America Great Again. But what has surprised this writer and many others is his extraordinary resilience and the unwavering fidelity of his large band of disciples within the Republican Party.
My suspicion had been that, seeing him weighed down by legal and other difficulties, those who supported him in 2016 and 2020 would collectively give thanks for their hero, but gravitate toward someone else, such as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, whose views on the issues are indistinguishable. Trumpism without Trump. What those of us who ventured guesses of this sort failed to grasp, however, was the cult of personality that had sprung up.
So here we are. Is there a chance that Biden and/or Trump might not be the nominees? Could Biden be persuaded to step aside or will Trump get so ensnared by the legal process that it becomes untenable for him to continue?
Without delving excessively into the obscure details, if these implausible, yet not impossible, scenarios were to unfold before the party conventions this summer, there would be a mad scramble among their putative replacements and the substitute would be anointed by delegates on the convention floor. And if it happened between then and the November 5 election, the leading luminaries of the two parties would make the call.
Paddy Power has Donald Trump the 11/10 favourite to be the 47th POTUS. But with all of the “known unknowns” out there, I wouldn’t be rushing to the bookies. Uncertainties aside, it will be a great privilege to try – again, key word – to accurately assess the topsy-turvy political and legal state of play in the land of my birth for Irish Post readers in the months ahead.
Larry DonnellyPROFILE
Larry Donnelly is a Boston born and educated attorney who is a Lecturer in the School of Law at the University of Galway where he is the founder and director of the School of Law's highly regarded Clinical Legal Education programme.
From 2010-2012, he was on leave of absence from the School of Law and worked as Manager of the Public Interest Law Alliance (PILA), a Dublin-based project of the Free Legal Advice Centres Ltd., which seeks to expand the use of law in the public interest and for the benefit of marginalised and disadvantaged people in Ireland. He remains a consultant to PILA.
He is a regular media commentator on politics, current affairs and law in Ireland and the US and will be writing a monthly column for The Irish Post .
@LarryPDonnelly
