It is fashionable these days to proclaim Joe Biden incapable of sparing the world the catastrophe of a new Donald Trump presidency. It is a mistake.
• Read also: Biden says he is working to ensure that Israel “clearly” reduces its presence in Gaza
Biden’s victory is not certain, but it is far from impossible. It even remains quite probable.
Geriatrics at five cents
Several of the pseudo-experts who immediately predict a victory for Donald Trump do not fail to pretend to be doctors and declare Biden senile in a peremptory manner.
If his age is indeed a problem, compared to his opponent who is a few years younger and a few dozen kilos heavier than him, Joe Biden is in excellent health. As for his occasional speech problems (he stuttered in his youth), they are incommensurate with the incessant stream of grotesquely incoherent remarks from his opponent.
Is Biden capable of accomplishing his task? Whether we agree or not with what he did in his first mandate, it is clear that he accomplished a lot and that his record is impressive, given the fact that he inherited an unprecedented crisis and a dysfunctional Congress.
The campaign will count
People will respond to me that the polls are very bad for Biden and that he will not be able to get out of it. First, since the invention of polls, the correlation between voting intentions in January and the presidential vote in November is almost zero.
In January 2016, Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump; in January 2012, Mitt Romney beat Barack Obama; in January 2008, John McCain beat Barack Obama; in 2004, John Kerry beat George W. Bush; in 1980, Jimmy Carter beat Ronald Reagan. And many more.
Biden demonstrated last Friday, during a passionate speech in Pennsylvania, that he would campaign vigorously to defend his record, denounce the failings of his opponent and highlight the threat he represents to democracy and the rule of law. Biden will not spare Trump, to whom he attached an epithet that will make him lose his temper: “loser”.
The games are not made
Biden can’t move the core Trump cultists, but the core electorate generally responds to actual economic conditions.
With growth that places the United States in the world’s leading group, a job market better than that of the good years of Trump and inflation that is coming down faster than in most advanced industrial countries, economic pessimism of Americans could fade to Biden’s advantage… especially if Trump continues to say he would like a recession in 2024 for his own political benefit.
The year 2024 will also be the year of Trump’s trials and the incompetence exhibited so far by his lawyers suggests that this will attract a lot of support outside of the cultists who swallow his victim speech like whey.
Although Democrats aren’t showing great enthusiasm, that was also true in 2018, 2020 and 2022, and each time they outperformed expectations at the polls.
298 days before the vote, as Mark Twain would have said, the announcements of the political death of Joe Biden are clearly exaggerated.