Endgame nears for democrats, as Biden closes in on Trump

On the front burner is the ravaging coronavirus ripping across America and taking its toll: more than 325,000 have been infected across 50 states; 10,000 have died, if not more; state governors are at times looking in disbelief at the fashion in which the Federal government is responding; and a businessman-turned president of the United States at times insisting that all this fuss is a deliberately made up story of the Democrats with the assistance of their left wing media friends to bring down a very stable genius.

On the back burner is the politics of the Democratic Party as it braces for any and every situation in a fast changing environment: more than a dozen states have put off their primaries/caucuses to June, if not later; Wisconsin is keeping its date on April 7; Senator Bernie Sanders insisted that it must be postponed as former Vice President Joseph Biden disagreed; and a federal court ruled that the primaries must proceed as scheduled—the only small consolation being that the final result could not be announced until April 13, the last date for the mail-in ballots to arrive. Both Biden and Sanders can live with that.

Biden’s rise is Sanders’ loss

If the latest scheme of things are anything to go by in Wisconsin, this should be the last grand staging by the Vermont Senator. The former vice president who was barely ahead of Sanders by double digits in mid-February is now posting a nearly 30-point lead in the diary state and looks well set to defeat his opponent as comfortably as he did in Michigan last month by 17 points.

In 2016, Sanders hammered away at Hillary Clinton in both Michigan and Wisconsin, a political showing that considerably weakened Clinton at the time of the final show in November that year. Latest polls show that Biden is all set to replicate in Wisconsin what he pulled off in Michigan by having working class men, suburban women, African Americans, union and non-union homes as his key constituents. The primaries of March 10 and March 17 also showed that Biden has slowly started to poach into Sanders’ young and educated voting group as well.

If Biden scores big in Wisconsin, that will send the message not only to Sanders but also to the Republican incumbent and for different reasons. To the Vermonter it would plainly signal that the endgame has come and that he better quit the race and with whatever grace is left. Insisting that he would stay on would mean that Sanders is totally out of touch with reality, of not only the delegate count and his ability to play catch-up but also the stark fact that the carnival of a postponed convention may not even take place this August in Milwaukee.

Biden has already alluded to this by saying that it may not be possible to have a gathering of 10,20 or 30,000 people at one place when the present norm  of social distancing is between three and six meters.

Trump’s team rattled?

Political strategists of President Trump are said to be getting very uncomfortable with the fact that Biden is getting stronger in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, the three states Republicans managed to get by a narrow margin in 2016. The particular worry for the Republicans is Biden’s ability to garner Unionists, an indication that the empty scare tactics of the Grand Old Party are not making any inroads.

Michigan and Wisconsin are states that Trump won by a whisker and these two are critical for any Republican to get over the top in November 2020. Particularly disconcerting to GOP strategists is that at a time when generally people rally around the flag and the President in a time of crisis and give a huge boost to their leaders, in the case of president it has been no more than a small “bump” whereas governors of states like Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and New York have had a huge rise in their popularity.

With the exception of Ohio, the other three states have Democratic governors which gives Trump supporters additional jitters as Michigan and Wisconsin are considered either battleground or swing states. Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers’ handling of the coronavirus has seen his standing jump from 51 per cent to 76 per cent; in Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitman– a possible Vice Presidential candidate of Biden—has her approval rating go from 42 per cent to 60 per cent; and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has the unbelievable support of 87 per cent with one poll saying that even 70 per cent Republicans are with him in this time of crisis.

Trump’s jump insignificant

Supporters of Trump both inside the White House and outside point to this 5 per cent jump in approval rating as proof of the President rising to the occasion and delivering at a time of crisis. But what is also appearing in independent media is that foreign leaders like Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have improved their standings in their respective countries by a sizeable fashion as they have shown their abilities to rise to the occasion.

But for President Trump this 5 per cent jump or bump pales into insignificance when seen how the approval ratings of his predecessors like Presidents George HW Bush or George W Bush went into 90s in the aftermath of the invasion of Kuwait and American response and the terror attacks of September 11, 2001.

Seen in a different way all these polls are not going to matter to a President who has defied all that there is in politics. If an opinion poll shows him in a good light, that is the one to take cue from; if a survey portrays him in a bad light, that is a bogus poll and the work of Democrats and commies; if he wins the November elections that is because people saw the “great” things he had done in office for four years and want a repeat of it for the next four; if he loses on November 3, 2020 that is because illegals including thugs, rapists and drug czars courtesy Mexico voted for Biden or that millions of legal citizens who would have voted for him were turned away at the polling booths by corrupt officials. In fact one terrifying thought that must be haunting well-meaning Republicans and Democrats is not if Trump maneoveurs to postpone or cancel the November 3 election, but of a situation in which Trump loses the election and refuses to leave the White House!

(The writer was a former senior journalist in Washington DC, covering North America and the United Nations)

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