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Trump’s enemies thought once Donald left the White House, his leadership would erode, and they would quietly retake control of the political scene. They believed that Joe Biden’s victory would dismantle the aura of invincibility that Trump had built and that, as a result, the former president would be condemned to irrelevance or opprobrium. They were wrong.
A little more than a year and a half after the end of his presidency, Donald Trump’s leadership is unscathed. On the contrary, Joe Biden’s is fading at a notorious speed.
Trump heads to 2024
His narrative of fighting the deep state was cemented in light of the obvious bad faith surrounding his defeat in the 2020 election. Moreover, Biden’s consistent failures make the comparison with the previous administration’s successes that much more dramatic. Trump kept his loyalists and found new supporters among those disenchanted with the new administration.
Today Trump is, without a doubt, the most representative and supported nature of the Republican Party, and that was very clear last weekend, during the CPAC Texas 2022 convention, the event that gathers the social base of the Republican Party and in whose traditional survey the leadership of the former president was crystal clear.
The numbers are overwhelming: 99% supported the work done by Donald Trump as President of the United States, 93% would support him if he were to launch a new presidential campaign, and 69% prefer him over any other possible Republican Party aspirant. It is true that Ron DeSantis, the current governor of Florida, is a rising star and has clearly established himself in second place in the party’s internal preferences, but Trump is still competing in another division.
That is why the Democrats are panicking and proclaiming more and more openly the goal of preventing Donald Trump from appearing on the ballot in the next presidential election, because they are very clear: if the former president competes, he is very likely to win.
The Democrats and the high bureaucracy, who thought they had buried Donald Trump’s political career after the fiasco of those grotesque riots in the Capitol, are realizing that their rival is not defeated and can still cause them many bitter surprises.
Biden flounders
Joe Biden got to the White House in physical and political conditions that would have ruled him out of the race under almost any other circumstances. Biden’s situation is tenuous, to say the least: he is not charismatic, he does not inspire, he does not mobilize. Further, Biden does not project leadership and often does not even seem to know where he stands.
That is why the electoral results that supposedly placed Biden in the presidency with 81 million votes (11 million more than Barack Obama in 2008) are, shall we say, curious. In any case, the electoral operation that artificially inflated Joe’s support is not sustainable in the long run. Already in office, the border crisis, the shameful fall of the allied government in Afghanistan, record inflation, product shortages, high gasoline prices, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine showed America that Biden is not the right person.
With less than 2 years left in office, Biden looks to be the first president in more than half a century to not even receive the backing of his own party to run for re-election. Polls speak of as many as 7 out of 10 Americans not wanting to see him on the ballot, and the Democratic bubble itself is buzzing with increasingly serious talk about who might replace Biden on the 2024 presidential ballot.
In other words, in 2020, Biden won with numbers that would have made him the most popular politician in U.S. history, but less than 2 years later, that charade is no longer believed by anyone, not even in his own Party.
Of course, there is still a long way to go before the presidential election. However, there is already a clear enough trend to understand that Trump and the Republicans have a noticeable advantage over Biden and the Democrats. Once again, to the frustration of pundits and despair of rivals, Trump is standing tall and moving forward to 2024, while Biden is simply floundering.
Gerardo Garibay Camarena, is a doctor of law, writer and political analyst with experience in the public and private sectors. His new book is "How to Play Chess Without Craps: A Guide to Reading Politics and Understanding Politicians" // Gerardo Garibay Camarena es doctor en derecho, escritor y analista político con experiencia en el sector público y privado. Su nuevo libro es “Cómo jugar al ajedrez Sin dados: Una guía para leer la política y entender a los políticos”