As soon as the nominations become official, the competition will begin as to which option Americans think is less bad, writes ‘s U.S. correspondent Iida Tikka.
Iida TikkaYhdysvaltain correspondent
RALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA. So-called Super Tuesday is usually one of the most exciting days in American politics, with more than ten states voting in primaries.
During a typical Super Tuesday, at least one party’s primary is truly decisive and exciting. In 2020 Bernie Sanders was leading the Democratic presidential race, but Super Tuesday changed the game Joe Biden in favor. In 2016 Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump won so many states on Super Tuesday that they moved into the lead in their party’s primary races.
This year, the candidate line-up was practically clear before any Super Tuesday votes had been counted. At no point did the Democrats have a real contender for president For Joe Bidenand Donald Trump has easily won all but one of the primaries.
Super Tuesday vote count when it started, no one thought about whether the candidate lineup of either party could change.
Instead, attention was drawn to the protest voters, i.e. those Americans who decided to vote against the obvious candidate of their own party.
There are so many of them that it is these irritated voters who may decide the November election by staying home or voting against their own party’s candidate in the general election as well.
In practice, Joe Biden and Donald Trump are thus competing in the elections for which one the Americans consider to be a less bad option.
Could this have been won avoid?
Biden’s path to the Democratic presidential nomination looked very easy since he announced he would run again last April.
Traditionally, there are no challengers to the sitting president from within one’s own party. Especially when the Democratic Party is well aware of the fragmented composition of the party’s electorate.
When one candidate has once worked well enough for all the different groups that vote for the party, few people want to rock the boat by starting a potentially bloody fight for a new candidate. In 2016, some of Bernie Sanders’ supporters abstained from voting in protest of the party’s candidate choice, Hillary Clinton.
So Biden should have decided himself not to run again. It would have required confidence from Biden that the Democrats will be able to choose a candidate who would easily cover Trump if necessary.
Trump’s way of the Republicans candidacy practically started with the 2020 election loss and the lie spread by Trump that he did not lose the election.
Because so many Republican voters believe this lie, Trump’s campaign has become, in their eyes, a battle for justice against fraud. For these voters, Trump has never lost, so Republicans don’t even have to consider a new option for the party’s nominee.
The Republican apparatus handed over the decision-making power over the future of the party to Trump at the latest after the end of Trump’s second criminal trial. That’s when the majority of Republican senators decided to leave Trump unconvicted, even though the Republican leader Mitch McConnell found Trump to be guilty to the Congress attack that temporarily interrupted the power transfer process.
The fear of criticizing Trump has haunted the Republican primaries. It has resulted in competing candidates like Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis have not dared to say out loud why the voters should choose someone other than Trump as a candidate.
At the same time, the several charges brought against Trump mainly tire the voters, who cannot keep up with the significance of the multiple trials. The schedules of the trials have been extended significantly, so the most significant of them have not been running during the primaries. So far, the accusations have increased rather than weakened Trump’s support.
In addition, several accusations cemented Trump’s need to seek the presidency again – only as president could he pardon himself.
Based on Super Tuesday, it is it is difficult to say which of the candidates running for a second presidential term is really strong.
Trump’s team may be worried about what the Republicans who voted for Nikki Haley will do. They are especially found in big cities and their surrounding suburbs, where Trump must win to defeat Biden in the general election in November.
The concern of Biden and the Democrats is the voters who wrote “no commitment” on their ballot in the primary election. There are such voters especially among young people, and young voters are important not only as voters but also as campaign workers and volunteers.
The biggest concern for the country as a whole is whether disgruntled voters from both parties will stay home in November. That would be a sad signal for the state of American democracy.