BY SOUMANOU SALIFOU

PUBLISHER/EDITOR

It’s undeniable! The odds seem against President Joe Biden in his likely rematch with former President Donald Trump. Biden’s poll numbers have been dismal for months. The impressive improvement of the economy—traditionally the determining factor in U.S. presidential elections—is yet to materialize in the pockets of the average American. To top it all, the Republican party has abandoned the patriotic values the Grand Old Party was known for to engage in the cult of Donald Trump, committed to doing the bidding of the twice impeached, corrupt former president who faces 91 charges in four criminal cases.

Overrated poll numbers

It would be an understatement to say that Democratic leaders, starting with President Biden himself, are worried about the president’s low poll numbers, especially in a battleground state like Michigan where Trump holds a small lead. Around the Thanksgiving holiday, Biden shared his concern with a small circle of aides in a meeting, asking them to do something about it.

Trump’s popularity among Republican-leaning voters—estimated to be a steady, 30% of the party’s base—has been unwavering. So has his support among many Republican lawmakers who have no choice but to coalesce around him and do his bidding or be voted out of office. Several GOP legislators who dared cross the former president have lost their bids for reelection. Case in point, Liz Cheyney, U.S. House Representative of Wyoming’s at-large-congressional district. Cheyney, the eldest daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheyney, served as chair of the House Republican Conference—the third-highest position in the party’s leadership—only to be voted out of office as a result of Trump’s pressure during the 2022 mid-term elections.

Despite his apparently guaranteed following in the Republican party which translates to his unchanging, higher poll numbers, the former president does not want to take anything for granted. He recently traveled to Iowa, where he holds a more than 50% lead in the polls over his two Republican opponents combined—Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina’s Governor Nikki Haley—to ask his followers not to be complacent.

This speaks to the uncertainty of poll numbers.

Historically, no U.S. president has been reelected with an approval rate under 50% on election day—which is where Biden has been for a long time. But there has been a handful of exceptions that include two of Biden’s immediate predecessors, former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama who respectively had 49% and 46% approval rates on election day. That gives one a reason to temper the justifiable concerns of the president’s aides and likely Democratic voters. Democrats believe that further improvement of the economy will change the dynamics in their favor as the campaign grows in intensity.

Comparing the economy under Trump and Biden

U.S. presidents can influence the performance of the economy by using a few tools they have in their bags. But, although they get credited or blamed during economic upturns and downturns, presidents have little control over several key factors that determine the overall performance of the economy such as inflation, interest rate, and gas price.

The economy expanded under both Trump and Biden. It grew by 14% during the first three years under Trump. However, consistent with the global trend, the pandemic proved a spoiler, forcing the economy into an abrupt and fierce recession under Trump. Picking up from where Trump left it, and thanks to the stimulus package also used by his predecessor, Biden made a steady, strong return to economic growth, so far with a 22% growth.

Yet, if Biden can now boast five straight quarters of growth, with the most recent one in January beating expectations, his administration faced the worst inflation in 40 years as an aftershock of the pandemic with the $1.9 trillion stimulus package. That sent consumer prices through the roof. High demand of oil due to the war in Ukraine caused gas price to double from $1.84 a gallon when Trump left office, peaking at an-all time high of almost $5 last summer. A stark contrast with low inflation and gas price under Trump.

Waiting to pluck the fruit of Bidenomics

The Federal Reserve’s efforts to bring down inflation, added to various initiatives by the White House, have paid off, as illustrated by the recent steady stream of good economic news. That notwithstanding, the welcome rise in consumer spending; the creation of 14 million jobs, bringing the unemployment rate from 6.3 under Trump to 3.7, the lowest in decades; the fall of gas price down to $3 in most of the country; the student loan forgiveness; and important programs such as the $35 cap for insulin, the average consumer is yet to feel the full scope of the economic progress in his pocket. Hence the Democrats’ frustration over the voters not feeling the administration’s economic achievements.

Former President Obama, who has already helped the Biden campaign raise nearly $4 million from grassroots donors, vowed to join the campaign of his former vice president in the fall. Obama has already suggested some structural changes. Knowing what a formidable campaigner the first African American candidate who survived a slew of odds to rise to the highest office in the land, Democrats expect to change the dynamics in their favor.

Trump surprised by his own victory in 2016          

There has been no shortage of explanations as to why Hilary Clinton, clearly one of the best U.S. presidential candidates in several decades, lost in 2016 to Donald Trump, a man who bled all the way to election day from self-inflicted wounds of proven racial bigotry, business malpractice, and sexual misconduct. The explanations included: Then-FBI Director James Comey’s surprise new revelation about Clinton’s mishandling of classified information; Russia’s intervention; damaging revelations by WikiLeaks sought by Donald Trump about Clinton; Clinton’s failure to campaign in the battleground-state of Wisconsin; the lower participation of the crucial African American voters; and the speculation that America was not ready for a female president. None of the explanations carried more weight than Comey’s revelation that shook the campaign two weeks before election day when Clinton had a comfortable six-point lead over Trump.

Trump jumped on the gift of sorts from Comey, totally destroyed Clinton’s campaign and won the election with a small margin, to the surprise of many voters and his own. According to data relayed by CNN, “More Americans voted for Hillary Clinton than any other losing presidential candidate in US history.”

It would be fair to say that history would have been written differently if it weren’t for Comey’s last-minute revelation of a new batch of Clinton’s compromising emails.

Trump’s unsurmountable “ineligibility” factors in 2024

Trump’s four tumultuous years at the White House—the predatory instincts, the race-baiting, the chaos, and the inflammatory style—further exposed the flawed man that he is. That, political observers say, is the reason why he lost his bid for reelection in 2020 against Biden by a significant margin of popular votes, losing three states that delivered the White House to him in 2016: Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. After his double impeachment which is unprecedented in U.S. history, he now faces a total of 91 charges in four criminal cases.

The failure of his coup to overturn the 2020 election, with 147 Republican lawmakers voting against Joe Biden’s certification, speaks to the resiliency of U.S. democracy. Despite the Republican majority in the Supreme Court—three of the nine justices owe their life-long seats to Trump—only one of the 63 lawsuits he filed in hope to overturn the election result had some merit but fell short of changing the election’s result.

One needs not look further than the failure of most of the candidates Trump chose to run during the 2022 mid-term elections to gauge the limit of his influence on the national scale. The most striking case was the defeat of a token Black candidate he chose in the Republican-leaning state of Georgia to help the Republican party regain the majority in the U.S. Senate. Like Trump, his pawn Hershel Walker bled all the way to election day from self-inflicted wounds with lies about his military service that never happened; his graduating from college that did not exist; his proclaimed rock-solid opposition to abortion that one of his girl-friends that he paid to have an abortion publicly denied; not to mention his proclaimed strong family values—something on which Republicans claim they have the monopoly—when in fact Walker has fathered children right and left that he has abandoned.

Trump fatigue

In an article about Trump’s lies while he was in office, CNN’s senior reporter Daniel Dale wrote: “Trying to pick the most notable lies from Donald Trump’s presidency is like trying to pick the most notable pieces of junk from the town dump. There’s just so much ugly garbage to sift through before you can make a decision.” Reporting about the growing Trump fatigue in the country, even among some Republican voters, CBS News quoted Ashley Seiler, a resident of Marietta, Ga as saying about the former president: “I love what he did as a president. I’m not real happy with how he’s behaved after. He’s very polarizing for our country. His time is over. And I wish he would kind of enjoy retirement.” Seiler spoke for many.

Biden’s small problems

For his part, Biden faces the prospect of losing a significant fraction of the 92% of the Black electorate that voted for him in 2020. According to a recent USA TODAY’s survey, that huge percentage has shrunk to 65 for various reasons. No wonder the president, who cannot afford to lose the traditionally faithful Black vote, attended Sunday service this weekend at a Black church. In the same vein, a cross-section of young voters and Black voters who say the Biden administration has a hand in the genocide of civilians in Gaza by unconditionally supporting Israel in the ongoing Israel-Hamas war and threatened not to vote for him. That is not to mention a similar threat from Arab/Muslim Americans for the same reason. In an election that is likely to be tight, the unlikely materialization of these threats spell trouble for the Democratic incumbent.