Is Trump unbeatable?

FORGET for a minute the effects of the wars in Ukraine and Gaza on American politics. The bombshell that fell on Washington over the weekend was the results of an opinion poll that showed that voters in five electoral battleground states favoured former president Donald Trump over President Joe Biden when it comes to the 2024 presidential race.

Hence according to The New York Times and Siena College opinion poll, President Biden is losing to Trump by a margin of three to 10 percentage points among registered voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania, with the president ahead only in Wisconsin.

Biden is managing an improving economy with a low unemployment rate, rising incomes and a declining inflation rate and, as a war president, is leading the United States towards military and diplomatic successes. The notion that Biden is going to lose the election to a politically polarising former president who is battling a plethora of legal charges and probes – Trump has been indicted on criminal charges four times and will be on trial for much of next year – has sent shock waves across Washington.

Until recently, most observers had expected Biden to get re-elected albeit by a narrow margin.

But in reality, the president isn’t getting any credit for his performance on the economy, with The New York Times-Siena College poll indicating that registered voters prefer Trump over Biden on the economy by a 59 per cent to 37 per cent margin. Only 2 per cent of voters said the US economy was excellent.

The majority of voters said that economic issues would determine their vote in 2024, and they favour Trump over Biden by 60 per cent to 32 per cent.

There are also no indications that President Biden’s diplomatic achievements in dealing with Russia’s aggression in Ukraine and in managing the US response to the Gaza war so far has had any major impact on American voters – who express very little interest in foreign-policy issues and who tend to be critical of American interventionist military policies.

If anything, after months during which the Ukrainians had benefited from American public sympathy, there has been a major decline in that support and a political backlash against Biden’s military alliance with Ukraine, with a growing number of voters supporting reducing the assistance to Kyiv.

Nor has Biden’s strong support for Israel against the backdrop of the war with Hamas benefited him politically. There is a large Arab-Muslim community in Michigan as well as in other key electoral states, and some of these voters may decide to stay at home and not vote for the president next November to protest his backing for the Jewish state.

Indeed, recent opinion polls suggest that most of the Democratic voters – with clear majorities of African-Americans, Hispanics and voters under 30 – back reducing the support for Israel. Ironically, much of the support for Israel is among Republican voters who oppose Biden.

The conventional wisdom has been that the president’s main problem is that American voters are concerned about his advanced age and mental acuity – but are apparently not worried about Trump’s age; the latter is only four years younger than Biden.

But perhaps another reason for President Biden’s electoral problem is the perception among the public, including moderate independent voters and Republicans, that his Democratic Party has moved too far to the political left, with many activists in the party embracing a “woke” agenda with its emphasis on identity politics.

From that perspective, the fact that many of the left-leaning or progressive Democrats have also adopted an agenda critical of Israel over the war in Gaza demonstrates the political problem confronting Biden.

In any case, with the Iowa caucuses only two months away, there are now signs that Trump isn’t going to lose his position as a front runner in the Republican presidential primaries anytime soon.

The latest polls show Trump clinching the support of close to 50 per cent of Republican Iowa voters, with Florida governor Ron DeSantis getting around 20 per cent, and former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley with less than 10 per cent.

Trump is clearly unbeatable when it comes to the Republican presidential primary race.

The question now is whether he will also be invincible in the general election.