Of Riccardo Alcaro
The shadow of Donald Trump it extends to the next presidential – and congressional – elections in the United States. It’s a shadow threateningnot only because of what the former president could do if he returned to office, but also because of the disruptive effect on political and institutional balances of the United States of his trouble with the lawthe latter of which could even see him excluded from the race for the White House.
Is the Republican primary over before it begins?
Polls credit the former president with an abysmal lead (up to 63%) in the race for Republican nomination and they see him slightly ahead of the Democrat Joe Biden in the November challenge.
The idea that an alternative candidate to Trump could build up enough momentum from a victory in the Iowa or New Hampshire primaries to overtake the former president seems so remote as to appear academic. State-level polls show Trump leading everywhere, starting from Iowa, almost always with gaps not too dissimilar to the national vote. After ‘Super Tuesday’ March 5, when sixteen states will select delegates to support the candidates for the Republican convention in Milwaukee in July, the former president should therefore have already resolved the nomination question.
After the poor performance of the candidates supported by Trump at mid-term elections of 2022, it was thought that the Republican Party could move towards less controversial (though no less radical) figures, such as the governor of Florida Ron DeSantisfresh from his triumphant reconfirmation.
In the following months, however, it became clear that this hypothesis did not have a solid basis. Instead of insisting on his greater ‘electability’ based on his economic record and resistance to anti-Covid regulations (very unpopular among the US right), DeSantis has relaunched an agenda entirely centered on a ferocious anti-progressive cultural battle, often moving to more extreme positions than Trump himself on issues like abortion. Other candidates such as the entrepreneur did the same Vivek Ramaswamy. Yet, between them DeSantis and Ramaswamy garner around 15% of the conservative electorate. Clearly right-wing voters prefer the original to the copies.
Non-Trumpian (such as former Vice President Mike Pence) or avowedly anti-Trumpian (such as former New Jersey governor Chris Christie) candidates for the Republican nomination are footnotes in the primary book. The only apparent exception is the great hope of traditional conservatives, the former governor of South Carolina and former US ambassador to the UN (under Trump), Nikki Haley. However glorified by the press and supported by a growing number of wealthy donors, Haley is not a strong candidate – in fact she is very weak. After all, it languishes at a paltry 11% in national polls. In Iowa, where the assault on the former president should start, it fluctuates around 16%, a good 35 points below Trump.
The phantom opposition
The Republican primary season which opens next week already seems to have a foregone conclusion. From the moment the nomination is certain, any form of residual opposition to Trump in the conservative camp will dissolve, and the entire conservative party and electorate will rally around the former president, as they have largely done in recent years.
After the 2020 election, when the former president’s attempts to invalidate Biden’s victory culminated in theassault on Congress of the January 6, 2021 from a crowd of his supporters, it was common to come across Republicans who, especially behind the scenes, were counting on the fact that Trump was finished. Evidence to the contrary, however, soon began to accumulate.
The same night ofattack on the Capitolin which five people were killed, 139 Republican representatives and eight Republican senators were they refused however to certify the Biden victorywith no other justification than that of maintaining consensus among a convinced electoral base despite thecontrary evidence that the election had been rigged.
Shortly thereafter, Republican opposition prevented the Trump’s second impeachment resulted in his formal dismissal.
Only two Republicans, both of whom were later forced to leave the party, later participated in theHouse investigation on the storming of the Capitol, which ended with the recommendation to impeach the former president for insurrection.
And when the indictments arrived, Trump did not lose support among conservatives. If there has been an effect, at the moment it seems more to have galvanized the right, he is convinced that Trump is the victim of politically motivated indictments. The former president, it should be remembered, is under investigation both at the federal level and in Georgia for attempting to invalidate the 2020 election, as well as for illegal transfer and possession of classified documents (again at a federal level) and violating the laws on campaign finance in New York state.
Trump’s strength is Biden’s weakness
Sure or almost certain of obtaining the nomination, Trump can look to November with optimism. The former president remains a candidate extremely controversial in light of his judicial troubles, his increasingly extreme rhetoric, his authoritarian instincts. Nonetheless, he has gained support in key Democratic constituencies, such as black and Latino males.
His trump card isBiden’s unpopularity, which is unable to break away from 40% of the votes. Despite theeconomy has grown at a rapid pace and the unemployment both at historic lows, the president is discounting the effect of theinflation (back under control, but from the highest levels since the early 1980s), the anxiety about continuing immigrationand above all the perception of it too old for another term.
Unlike 2016, this time Trump can count on an organizational infrastructure – the so-called Project 2025, created by the ultra-conservative think tank Heritage Foundation – to implement a radical government agenda. The plan is to empty the federal administration of career personnel and replace them (at least in key positions) with people selected on the basis ofabsolute loyalty to Trump. The Department of Justice would look like this subservient to the White House and used not only to eliminate judicial threats (Trump could also pardon himself from federal crimes if he had already been convicted) and prosecute political opponents. It is no coincidence that in the USA even right-wing thinkers talk about a future one authoritarian drift.
Trump has created an epochal conflict between popular will and law
A second Trump presidency, however, it is not a given. Biden could catch up and defeat the former president, as he did in 2020. An eventuality condemnation in one of the four criminal trials it could undermine his consensus among independents and even Republicans (a third of whom say they are unavailable to support him in this case).
Or it could be Trump excluded a prioriI know Supreme Court should confirm the sentence with which the highest court of Colorado he has declared Trump ineligible because guilty of insurrection.
The Supreme Court is not likely to make its decision for a couple of months. Perhaps it is the most important sentence – undoubtedly the most anticipated – in the history of the United States. In essence, the nine judges – six conservatives (half of whom were appointed by Trump himself) and three progressives – find themselves faced with the question of whether, in a constitutional democracy, the judgment on a citizen’s eligibility ultimately derives from law or from electoral body.
Whatever the outcome, a portion of citizens will feel the verdict as illegitimatefurther widening the divisions in the already ultra-polarized electorate americano.
Law or politics? Rule of law or popular will? The history of the United States (and not only) is also the constant attempt not only to make the two things coexist but to make them complementary parts of an organic whole. Today they are separate and indeed in conflict between them. Even before it ends in a year or five, Donald Trump’s political story has left a mark heavy legacy for American democracy.