Tag Archives: #Biden

Netanyahu fighting Biden’s plan to end the war bodes ill for the ‘special relationship’

This op-ed was published by The National on June 5, 2024

In a dramatic news conference last week, US President Joe Biden outlined “an Israeli peace proposal” to end the war in Gaza. But the speech didn’t add up.

The plea for acceptance of the “Israeli peace proposal” was, bizarrely, aimed mainly at Israelis. As he spoke, it became apparent the proposal was not Israeli, but his own, albeit marketed by Mr. Biden as “Israeli” to pressure its government to agree to what he was craftily branding as its own idea.

Mr. Biden appealed to ordinary and elite Israelis for help. “I know there are those in Israel who will not agree with this plan and will call for the war to continue indefinitely,” Mr. Biden stated, adding that “some are even in the government coalition”. This invited casual observers to assume he was referring to Jewish supremacists such as Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.

“The people of Israel should know they can make this offer without any further risk to their own security,” with the operative word being “can”. In effect, he means that Israelis could and should “make this offer”, although they haven’t.

Anyone reading between the lines could immediately see that Mr. Biden was attempting to enlist the support of the Israeli public, particularly the huge percentage that favors a negotiated agreement with Hamas to retrieve hostages over an indefinite continuation of the quixotic and even absurd effort to secure the complete destruction of that organization.

He was also attempting to give Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu every opportunity of siding with Washington, at least in public, and blame any categorical opposition on his radical cabinet colleagues. Mr. Netanyahu, however, declined to co-operate.

His public responses, which stressed that the war must continue until an undefined and unachievable “defeat” of Hamas, amounted to an obvious and categorical “no” to what Mr. Biden had presented as an Israeli proposal. Mr. Biden’s plan envisages three loosely defined phases, leading from a phase 1 ceasefire and mutual release of captives to a phase 2 permanent cessation of hostilities followed by a phase 3 reconstruction in Gaza and establishment of a new post-conflict order there, which he did not describe.

Mr. Biden also said that if talks over phase 2 had not concluded in the six weeks allotted for phase 1 negotiations over phase 2, talks and the ceasefire would continue as long as all parties were abiding by phase 1 commitments. Neither side, therefore, would be able to simply pocket the gains from phase 1 and reinitiate conflict, willy-nilly, because they’re not interested in phase 2, most notably permanent cessation of hostilities, meaning an end to the war under the conditions that effectively exist whenever such an agreement is reached.

By insisting that the war must continue until additional unspecified, undefined and probably undefinable military and political goals are achieved, Mr. Netanyahu was categorically rejecting the logic of the three-phase plan and the American position that the goal is to permanently stop the fighting.

Mr. Biden concluded his remarks by bluntly saying, “it’s time for this war to end and for the day after to begin”. Mr. Netanyahu’s response was unmistakable, albeit slightly less explicit, amounting to “this is no time for this war to end”. He didn’t put it that way, but by insisting that Israel has a good deal more fighting to do and leaving the scope, aim and timetable of additional hostilities completely undefined, he only added to the impression that he would prefer to see this war go on, perhaps, as Mr. Biden said, indefinitely.

Hamas leaders understood this dichotomy immediately, and played on it, saying that they would accept the proposal as long as Israel “agreed to end the war”. Their intention is obvious: to exploit and exacerbate the split between Mr. Biden and Mr. Netanyahu and, indeed, between the US and Israel in general, over the continuation and purpose of the war. However, Hamas leaders in Gaza almost certainly also want the war, which they apparently believe is going according to plan, to continue indefinitely. The insurgency and “permanent state of war” they intended all along has already begun in Gaza city and elsewhere, after all.

Mr. Netanyahu tried to manage the latest crisis with Washington caused by his intransigence by saying he is open to phase 1, which includes a 42-day pause in fighting in exchange for return of many remaining hostages. But he insisted that Mr. Biden had not presented “the whole picture” in his speech. Once again, however, it was clear that he did not embrace the logic of Mr. Biden’s three-phase plan or his goal of securing an end to the war.

Mr. Netanyahu not only effectively rejected Mr. Biden’s proposal, he also batted aside the opportunity to blame his extremist coalition partners for the Israeli refusal to co-operate, welcoming the opportunity to play that role himself. However, Mr. Smotrich and Mr. Ben-Gvir refused to allow him to monopolize Israeli hawkishness, threatening to leave and bring down the government if it ever agreed to what both of them separately described as a “surrender”.

Mr. Biden and his administration will continue to pressure Mr. Netanyahu, the entire Israeli leadership and even the Israeli public to get behind this proposal that he unconvincingly claims was their own offer, but his chances look decidedly slim.

Mr. Netanyahu has clearly decided that the best way to stay out of prison, given that he is facing serious corruption charges in an ongoing trial, is to stay in office, and the best way to remain in power is to continue the war into the foreseeable future. Mr. Biden implied as much in a recent interview with TIME magazine. And Mr. Netanyahu is unlikely to risk losing his coalition and face incarceration just to please Washington.

The rift between the Israeli government and Mr. Biden, and indeed between Israel and the US, over Gaza – not to mention a possible invasion of Lebanon and the necessity of creating a Palestinian state – appears to be widening at every phase.

This is not, as I’ve noted on these pages before, an ordinary rift in the US-Israeli partnership. It has, instead, all the makings of the beginning of the end of the “special relationship” that has existed between the two countries since the late 1960s. And, as things stand, it’s only likely to get worse over time.

The verdict on Trump is in, but the jury is still out on Biden and the election

This op-ed was published by The National on June 1, 2024

After decades of carefully skirting lawlessness in his business, political and “romantic” affairs, Donald Trump has finally been held to account by the US legal system. Mr. Trump was found guilty in the adult film star hush money case in Manhattan, making him the first former president to be an adjudicated felon. But the impact on the 2024 election is unclear.

Mr. Trump was condemned by a jury of his peers in the city that knows him best. He was strikingly convicted on all 34 counts after only two days of deliberations. It’s a decisive legal defeat, though each of his other three pending criminal cases – the purloined top-secret documents case in Florida, and the federal and Georgia state prosecutions over his alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election – are far more serious both legally and politically.

It is still possible that the federal anti-democracy plot case could go to trial before the election, but the Supreme Court is dragging its feet on a simple and unnecessary ruling upholding a lower appellate court finding that, obviously, former presidents are not immune from criminal prosecutions.

Both the Trump campaign and that of his presumptive opponent, US President Joe Biden, issued statements agreeing that the historic conviction won’t have much impact on the campaign or the election. Both have vowed to continue as planned. But, although both sides are likely to indeed persist with their existing strategies, the guilty verdict in fact could have a huge impact on the outcome.

Mr. Trump’s team and supporters are breathlessly insisting the convictions actually help his chances in November. They point to a potential fundraising surge, just as occurred when he was indicted in Georgia. That could well happen, and one of his key fundraising websites crashed immediately after the verdict, possibly because, as the campaign claims, it was overwhelmed by small dollar donations from his base.

Yet this is almost certainly empty bluster. His core supporters won’t care that he is now a convicted felon, as well as an adjudicated sexual abuser, defamer, fraudster and tax cheat, as determined by other recent civil cases. And they would have the same reaction to convictions in any of the other cases. The same applies to the disgraceful response by most elected Republicans who have rallied to his defence and condemned the process as “entirely political” and utterly illegitimate. There is nothing, apparently, whatsoever, that would shake the dedication of his party to its dear leader.

But the fact that the core of the Republican Party has become something of a personality cult does not mean that the relatively small number of uncommitted voters in swing states share this bizarre blind allegiance. They may well find this conviction, and the despicable reaction of Trump and other leading Republicans in attacking the US judicial system to be the last straw.

Mr Biden is unpopular. And many Americans insist that the country is in an economic recession when, in fact, it is economically robust and they report that their own finances are doing well. Many also believe that unemployment is at a 50-year high rather than the actual 50-year low. Some of this is because of relatively high inflation and interest rates, meaning that the cost of borrowing and keeping money is high. But it is also the result of persistent and shameless propaganda by right wing media that have pushed narratives about crime and economic rates that have been highly misleading, to put it charitably.

But Mr Trump appears to be even more unpopular, and that will only be exacerbated by these criminal convictions. Mr Trump’s reaction, lashing out not merely at the prosecutors but at the jury, the judge and the legal system as a whole, is characterised by the kind of unpatriotic and, let’s face it, downright anti-American outbursts that won’t help him with the swing voters he must win over.

Because both men are distinctly unpopular and are effectively both incumbents running for second presidential terms, the election probably boils down to a simple formula. If it is a referendum on the president, as a re-election campaign normally would be, Mr Biden is likely to lose. But, if it is instead a referendum on Mr Trump, then it is the former president who has chance of prevailing. The criminal convictions as well as earlier devastating civil judgments only underscore that reality.

Mr Biden’s campaign will not only focus on making the case about his own presidency and plans for the next four years. It will goad and provoke Mr Trump, and sit back and watch him expertly make the case against himself. Age, his party’s seemingly endless adoration and the recent pseudo-monarchical trappings of the presidency have all combined to increase his arrogance, raging narcissism and shocking inability at self-control.

Unless Mr Trump’s rhetoric and personal behaviour suddenly moderate, his potential for creeping self-destruction as the campaign moves along is enormous. And his own fixation on himself, his endless grievances and his antipathy for all existing American institutions, now focused on the judicial system as a whole, may make it impossible for him to shift the focus onto Mr Biden.

The candidates have agreed to two debates, but it was always questionable whether Mr Trump would ultimately show up for them. That potential evasion is now even more plausible, since Mr Biden could and certainly should hammer on the point that only one of the two candidates on the stage is a convicted felon, as well as an adjudicated sexual abuser and fraudster.

Mr Trump still retains a huge amount of public support and has been leading by small margins in most polls of swing states. Polling data in the next few weeks, as the impact of the criminal convictions is measured, will be very significant.

But the campaigns are both right that this probably will not be determinative. Neither side has yet found a key breakthrough moment that creates decisive momentum and forms a winning coalition.

But the bottom line is that Mr Trump’s conviction cannot possibly be a positive for him in winning back the presidency. It is, at the very least, a serious blow. And while, on its own, it may not guarantee Mr Biden another term, it could well be a key part of an overall message about Mr Trump’s fitness for office that ultimately secures victory for the Democrat.

Biden’s mapping a different route to the White House this time

This op-ed was published by The National on May 30, 2024

In a huge change from his strategy in 2020, US President Joe Biden is running to hold the political center and even attempt to pick off disaffected parts of the political right.

He is seeking a strikingly different winning coalition than four years ago. Then, as now, he presented himself as the “normal” and “sane” candidate running against an opponent he depicted as distinctly outside of the normative spectrum of all American political traditions and as of questionable emotional stability. He may find it easier to depict former president Donald Trump as eccentric and, in his own words, a would be dictator, if only, as he vowed, “on the first day.”

In 2020, Mr. Biden ran on uniting the Democratic Party, working hard to court the progressive left. This time he’s casting himself as preventing the Democratic Party from falling into the grip of the far left, which may have overplayed its hand with much of the US electorate.

He isn’t repudiating the left, but appears to be essentially telling them to take it or leave it, relying on a dramatic contrast with Mr. Trump. That’s likely to become clearer and starker as the campaign progresses.

Mr. Trump and his backers are proposing a range of extraordinarily radical new policies, including the unprecedented mass deportation of millions of undocumented immigrants and asylum-seekers.

Right-wing think tanks are planning radical policy shifts, including a thoroughgoing purge of the federal administrative workforce, replacing tens of thousands of civil servants with handpicked ideological replacements.

The purpose would not merely be to seize control of the apparatus of government into the indefinite future, but more immediately to conduct a vast rollback of regulatory administration by the federal government that has insured compliance with environmental, health and safety, diversity and inclusion, and other public interest standards developed over the past half century.

Mr. Trump has reportedly been courting millions in de facto campaign contributions from super wealthy donors, promising additional tax cuts and de-regulation. He has even been asking donors to specify precisely what regulations they find most irksome to their business interests, linking major donations to specific attempted administrative rollbacks.

Mr. Trump will counter attack against a left-wing cultural agenda that has alienated many ordinary white Americans, though Mr. Biden will cast himself as an effective force of attenuation and containment. Even more important will be the Republican emphasis on immigration and the economic, ethnic and racial anxieties it often represents.

Mr. Biden will counter that, to the chagrin of many progressives, under his leadership Democrats in Congress voted for immigration legislation that amounted to a Republican wish list but that was rejected, at Mr. Trump’s insistence, by House Republicans who refused to take yes for an answer. The legislation contained no aspect of the liberal immigration agenda.

Mr. Biden will certainly argue that Mr. Trump cherishes the crisis at the southern border as a political issue, but wants nothing to do with a solution.

And Mr. Biden has been handed a tremendously powerful issue by the US Supreme Court. The wholesale attack on reproductive freedom, in vitro fertilization and even contraception in Republican-dominated states, even extending to efforts to limit free speech and the freedom of movement within the country, could prove to be Mr. Biden’s most powerful issue.

Realizing this, Mr. Trump has moderated his own stance on the matter and now backs a nationwide 15-week standard, after which states would be free to impose strict and even total restrictions. But Mr. Biden is far closer to the national mood, which opposes the Republican commitment to draconian limitations.

The issue of reproductive rights has not proved a short-lived source of backlash. To the contrary, in every election in which it has been a major feature, even in the most right-wing constituencies, anti-abortion candidates have lost to those favoring protecting reproductive rights.

Mr. Biden will be hoping for a massive turnout by Americans, especially women, appalled at the once-Trump-inspired turn towards totalizing restrictions and the drive among many Republicans for a national ban on all pregnancy terminations, often with no restrictions for rape and incest, even among children.

Unlike in the past where a Democratic push for greater reproductive freedom was essentially a liberal or even left-wing agenda, in this case Mr. Biden will be appealing to the broad center he is targeting.

Should Mr. Trump be convicted, as seems entirely plausible, of a major felony in the adult film star hush money case, Mr. Biden would have further opportunities to make inroads beyond the center and into the political right. He could at least persuade Republicans who cannot countenance voting for a convicted felon to stay home if not hold their noses and vote for the Democrat.

Mr Biden may feel that much of the progressive left simply cannot be won over on the merits. His strong support for Israel‘s war of vengeance in Gaza, only recently involving clear limitations and sharp, albeit limited, criticism, is an obvious example. Nonetheless, the President can point to an impressive record of liberal legislative and executive order domestic accomplishments.

Americans will ultimately have to choose between two candidates representing very different visions. Mr. Biden will be running as the embodiment of the Constitution and traditional political order, whereas Mr. Trump has displayed an open hostility to national norms and traditions, particularly with his vow to be a dictator, albeit only, he says, for the first day. But many Americans will realize that this authoritarian first day can extend itself indefinitely if the goals it is supposed to accomplish are not secured in 24 hours, as seems virtually inevitable.

So the President is gambling that many otherwise alienated progressives will, eventually, feel impelled to support him no matter how reluctantly, and that he has a real shot of not only holding the political center but also convincing many disenchanted Republicans to break ranks for once in order to preserve the constitutional order, or at least stay home rather than voting for a convicted felon.

That’s a very different course of action from 2020. Given the increasingly radical politics and unstable personality of his opponent, it may yet prove to be a wise gamble.

 

 

Biden will have to choose between his left-wing base and the Never Trumpers

This op-ed was published by The National on April 10, 2024

U.S. President Joe Biden finds himself squeezed between competing imperatives in the run-up to the November presidential election.

Neither he nor his presumptive Republican opponent, former president Donald Trump, have yet assembled a working coalition that can produce an electoral college majority, delivering either candidate a second presidential term. Mr. Biden is in a far more advantageous position, but he faces a potent conundrum about how best to expand his current base: moving to the right and embracing former Trump voters or tacking to the left and trying to shore up the liberal coalition that secured him victory in 2020.

Conventional wisdom would suggest that Mr. Biden has little to lose by making a concerted push to win over alienated Republicans. But such a move could be very risky.

Traditional assumptions hold that Mr. Biden’s former voters are unlikely to end up supporting Mr. Trump, whose racist, violent and extreme rhetoric is far more radical now than in 2020 or 2016. The overwhelming majority, the thinking goes, will eventually come back to Mr. Biden – even holding their noses – or, at the very least, will stay home.

But how many will really be won over by the current, highly radicalized, version of Mr. Trump currently on offer? Apparently more than most Democrats would have anticipated.

Current polling suggests that Mr. Trump is doing much better among Latinos and non-college-educated African Americans and other minorities, once bastions of the Democratic voter base and core parts of Mr. Biden’s 2020 coalition, than many liberals would’ve thought possible.

Democrats have long suffered from an evident and lazy complacency, with the assumption that Latinos would be impelled by a mixture of immigration and economics, and African Americans by resentment of Republican racism and their own class concerns, to always return to their fold.

Many Latinos are socially conservative, religious Catholics or other Christians, and are therefore responsive to the traditionalist and even reactionary Republican agenda, especially on abortion. Immigration does not trump everything else, and Latinos are by no means united in wanting the US to be more welcoming at the border. Indeed, many working-class Latinos are as resentful of recent migrants using the asylum system to try to bypass formal immigration processes as other Americans.

Non-college-educated African-American men have proved to be particularly receptive to Mr. Trump’s appeals in recent months. The extent to which they are aware of his new rhetoric about immigrants from Asia and Africa “poisoning the bloodstream” of the US population, or if they would care, is unclear. But his populist message, designed to appeal rhetorically to blue-collar constituents outside of the traditional unions, does seem to resonate with many young black men.

Both groups also appear to be receptive to his hyper-nationalism and isolationist rhetoric, wrongly assuming, along with many of their white rural counterparts, that international engagement and leadership are simply a burden on the American people and a boondoggle for wealthy corporations. Finally, both seem responsive to Mr. Trump’s persona as a strongman outsider who can supposedly cut through traditional power structures and impose better and fairer policies on a corrupt and parasitical elite.

So, Mr. Biden needs to be attentive to the drift of these groups away from his constituency, which in some cases could mean tacking to the populist left in order to counteract the populist right.

Moreover, the Gaza war has cast a huge shadow over Mr. Biden’s credibility with progressive left-wing groups, many of them African-American social justice and religious constituencies, who are deeply angered about the carte blanche given to Israel in attacking not just Hamas but the whole of Gazan society. On the US left, there is a conviction that Israel has engaged in an exterminationist, even genocidal, war in Gaza with the strong backing of the President and his administration, and that this has been shameful and morally unacceptable.

Mr. Biden needs to distance himself from this war, and therefore needs an end to major fighting in Gaza before campaigning gets fully under way by the early summer. But there is little sign that Israel views the timeline in a similar manner. Pushback from the progressive left is a key reason that the administration has been slowly ratcheting up pressure on Israel to ease the humanitarian crisis and prepare to end the war in the coming weeks.

But if Mr. Biden attends to these groups, it could be at the expense of the most significant “gettable” group of voters, in addition to the suburban constituencies in swing states that are likely to determine the outcome. While Mr. Biden has his Democratic critics, Mr. Trump goes into the election with a striking number of Republicans who clearly don’t want him as their nominee. Former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley consistently got between 20-40 per cent of primary votes, and there is ample additional evidence that more Republicans than ever are fed up with his extremism and shenanigans.

Mr. Biden has already attempted to reach out to these voters by embracing what amounts to a Republican agenda on border security in legislation that was killed by Republican House members, precisely to thwart such outreach. But there is much more he can and should do to make it clear to disaffected conservatives, especially those who once supported Mr. Trump but no longer can, that he represents an acceptable, even desirable, alternative.

Mr. Trump’s upcoming legal tribulations, especially the trial on hush money payments to an adult film star that is due to start next week, could well offer the President a devastating weapon. A felony conviction could provide a decisive opening to convince former Trump voters and other Republicans to at least stay home in November.

Mr. Biden wouldn’t have to tack very hard to the right to win over many of them, but he’s going to have to do more than he already has. The problem is that if he reaches out to disaffected parts of his 2020 coalition among minorities and on the left, he may lose the opportunity to steal or silence decisive numbers of Republican votes.

Mr. Biden’s conundrum is that he quite possibly cannot have both or simply rely on one group or the other coming back to him in November in despair. He’s probably going to have to choose between these outreach agendas. And, given what’s at stake in the 2024 election, that’s going to be a momentous strategic decision indeed.

Biden’s fiery State of the Union has given him a decisive edge over Trump

This op-ed was published by The National on March 12, 2024

“Dark Brandon” the nickname coined by Joe Biden’s supporters to describe his formidable side was in full effect last week as the US President launched his re-election campaign in a barn-burning State of the Union address before Congress.

Republicans have been painting the 81-year-old President as a doddering octogenarian with pronounced dementia and rapidly decreasing, if any, ability to govern. Huge blunder.

This foolhardy caricature sat uneasily beside its even more grotesque fraternal twin in the right-wing echo chamber: Mr. Biden as the mastermind behind a global network of corruption, siphoning millions from as far afield as Ukraine and China into his family coffers.

Although absolutely no evidence supporting these apparent fantasies has been discovered despite intensive investigations by Republican House committees, American conservatives are constantly told that the President is simultaneously a near-vegetable and a modern Alexander the Great of multinational larceny.

Creeping senility was always the more potent and politically valuable charge. It taps into understandable concerns about Mr. Biden’s unprecedented age for an American president stoked widespread perceptions, while framing him as a criminal kingpin had little traction beyond committed right-wingers.

Even many Democrats shared doubts about his age and fitness, leading to widespread liberal nail-biting and cold sweats before the address, especially since Mr. Biden has been an ill-spoken, self-declared “gaff machine” for his entire half-century in politics.

Both sides, as so often, were badly misled by the same casual assumptions. Mr. Biden took to the lectern and gleefully demolished any thought that he is past it.

Dispensing with the usual thanks to House Speaker Mike Johnson, he immediately tore into Republicans over the military support for Ukraine that Mr Johnson is blocking. The President didn’t spell it out, but he didn’t have to: the only reason Kyiv is being abandoned is Mr Johnson’s refusal to allow a vote on military aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, which would easily pass.

Mr Biden also didn’t need to state bluntly that the Speaker is merely acquiescing to the longstanding anti-Ukraine and pro-Russia sympathies of former president Donald Trump. Throughout, Mr Johnson wore the expression of someone in extreme physical discomfort.

While Mr Biden’s speech was neither subtle nor especially artful, he deftly wove together numerous apparently disconnected strands into a coherent tapestry representing his essential re-election narrative.

By starting with an invocation of Franklin Roosevelt’s famous 1941 State of the Union speech when American democracy was simultaneously threatened by aggression abroad and subversion at home, he sought to paint Republicans in general, and Mr Trump in particular, as threats to personal and political freedoms and national security.

Mr Biden slurred some words and stumbled over a few passages that a younger and more eloquent politician would have nailed with ease. But he has always been a poor public speaker. He’s also showing his age, and battling the return of a significant stutter he overcame as a youth – which was nauseatingly mocked by Mr. Trump over the weekend.

But the President exhibited a fire and fighting spirit for which Democrats have been deeply yearning, and surely eliminated any thought of replacing him at the party convention this summer. Mr. Biden is evidently and understandably eager to debate “my predecessor”, whom he mentioned 13 times but never by name.

While Mr. Trump claims to be similarly enthusiastic, despite refusing to take part in any Republican primary debates, based on Mr. Biden’s performance he can probably be expected to find some excuse.

Mr. Biden wasn’t simply reading from a teleprompter. He did that, of course, but he also ad-libbed – considerably more than any previous president ever has in State of the Union addresses – and seemed to lay rhetorical traps for Republican heckling. These he met with largely effective, mocking rejoinders designed to trap Republicans into positions on key issues, such as the budget deficit, taxation and border security, about which they prefer to remain ambiguous.

The President’s folksy, faux-incredulous responses to Republican booing – “Oh, you don’t like that bill, huh? … that conservatives got together and said was a good bill? I’ll be darned” – illustrated that Mr. Biden was not merely quick-witted on the evening but also thoroughly enjoying himself.

He concluded by directly addressing his advanced age, saying that the real question is the age of one’s ideas, and thereby painting Mr. Trump and the Republicans as wanting to drag the country back into darker times, especially on abortion, contraception and reproductive rights.

He warned the assembled Supreme Court justices, quoting their recent ruling that eliminated the fifty-year-old constitutional right to an early-term abortion, that “you’re about to realize just how much you were right about” the “electoral or political power” of women.

Most Americans didn’t watch this prototype of his campaign stump speech. But the 32.2 million who did were reminded that Mr. Biden remains sharp and combative, despite the memory lapses he shares with the 77-year-old Mr. Trump, and that he’s an adept and polished politician who especially relishes the give-and-take in Congress.

When confronted by an irate Marjorie Taylor Greene – the Republican rabble-rouser from Georgia who was bedecked head to toe in garish red Trump/Maga paraphernalia – Mr. Biden reacted with evident and even indulgent amusement.

His decades of congressional experience help explain how Mr. Biden has been so successful, particularly on domestic legislation, in his first term. At last, he didn’t hesitate to blow his own trumpet.

While most Democrats were left ecstatic, some Republicans were reduced to complaining that “Jacked-Up Joe” was so energetic and forceful that he must have been given amphetamines, or at least that his speech was overly partisan and disturbingly confrontational.

The President’s efficacy was verified by their evident frustration, which was surely exacerbated by an overwrought official response from Alabama Senator Katie Britt who appeared to instantaneously oscillate between near-fits of histrionic laughter and distraught weeping. It was almost unanimously hailed as the worst-ever State of the Union rebuttal, comma and she’s been removed from most shortlists of potential Trump vice-presidential running mates.

The presidential campaign is barely under way, but the key themes are already clear. Mr. Biden has energized and delighted his base, and gone a long way towards dispelling doubts about his age and fitness.

Neither he nor Mr. Trump has yet solidified a winning 2024 coalition. But Mr. Biden has unquestionably increased his already robust re-election chances.

Biden and Trump are showing their age – but only one of them is in a legal mess

This op-ed was published by The National on March 6, 2024

As he and his predecessor, Donald Trump, effectively secured their parties’ nominations on Tuesday, US President Joe Biden continues to struggle in polls. And that’s despite persistent economic good news and Americans increasingly recognising that their economy is thriving. The most recent results among registered voters show Mr Biden trailing Mr Trump by five percentage points.

Although voters say that Mr Trump’s policies were better for them, it is likely that many have tuned out of politics since the mayhem of January 6, 2021, and have developed a predictable amnesia details of Mr Trump’s record, particularly in the first year of the pandemic. Few have probably registered yet how extreme and unstable Mr Trump appears to have become in the years since.

Undoubtedly, they’ll be reminded and informed of all that soon enough.

It’s far too early for Democrats to start the handwringing to which they seem uncommonly addicted. Still, Mr Biden must steadfastly claim credit for the remarkable US economic comeback and promote his new initiatives to tackle inflation, while also pressing forward with unilateral action on the border and continuing to publicly implore Republican lawmakers to take “yes” for an answer on immigration legislation. In the coming months, he would then have every opportunity to deny Mr Trump access to what should be his two most effective issues: inflation and immigration.

Nonetheless, in addition to recent polling, Republicans are feeling buoyed by two apparently encouraging rulings from the Supreme Court. Many Democrats conversely bemoan the decisions, yet again condemning the Court as hopelessly biased in favour of the former president who appointed three of the six-vote right-wing majority.

Despite this apparent bipartisan consensus, Mr Trump may not actually benefit from either case.

Last week, the Court declined to simply uphold a watertight ruling by the DC circuit appellate court denying Mr Trump’s novel claims of absolute presidential immunity from prosecution, including after leaving office.

The idea is patently absurd: how can the national chief magistrate, the one person sworn to “take care to see that the laws are faithfully executed”, simultaneously be the sole individual empowered to ignore all such laws with complete impunity and unaccountability? What would then compel the president to leave office at all, or abstain from committing crimes, or doing anything whatsoever that he or she finds convenient, useful or even amusing – no matter how outrageous or unlawful?

Many liberals hoped that the Supreme Court wouldn’t entertain such propositions and simply let the unassailable DC court ruling stand, not least because the outcome is inevitable. Many reacted with apoplexy when, instead, the Court announced that it would hear arguments in April, and rule by the end of its term on June 20. The typical Trump delaying tactic worked again, they cried.

Perhaps. But the Court has set itself a clear timetable. If it rules in late June that presidents may not break the law with permanent impunity, as it surely will, that should free Judge Tanya Chutkan and prosecutor Jack Smith to move expeditiously to put Mr Trump on trial for attempting to remain in power unlawfully by overturning a valid election and launching a failed coup against the US Constitution.

It’s not obvious why either would want to do Mr Trump any special favours by suspending legal processes simply because he’s running for re-election in a system for which he has evident contempt.

Unless Mr Trump comes up with some plausible new objections, the trial is unlikely to be delayed until after the election (and, if he wins, ordered abandoned). Instead, there seems to be every possibility that he will stand trial for election subversion in the weeks immediately before voting.

That’s unlikely to bolster his campaign or win many votes among the suburban and swing voters in the six or seven competitive “purple” states that will decide the outcome in November. The Court probably did indeed provide Mr Trump a delay, but not necessarily one that’s going to end up helping him get re-elected.

The second decision, on Monday, was – also probably incorrectly – again greeted on both sides as a big win for Mr Trump. The Supreme Court held that courts in Colorado misread the 14th amendment when they held that, as an insurrectionist, he is ineligible to regain federal office and should be removed from the state’s ballots. The unanimous, though strikingly inconsistent Court opinions weren’t just incompatible. They were often incomprehensible and unintelligible.

The conservative justices, as I predicted in these pages, made no effort whatsoever to uphold their supposed principles and tie their rulings to the amendment’s plain text or history. They merely identified their preferred outcome – a practice they abhor as intolerable when practised by liberals – and declared that only Congress, and not states, can enforce the amendment. There’s nothing whatsoever in the amendment’s language or the historical record supporting that conclusion.

Most glaringly, the two-paragraph concurrence from Judge Amy Coney Barrett appears self-contradictory and garbled, while openly admitting that the Court sought to avoid any politically “divisive” judgment. This is thinly veiled code for deliberately avoiding any ruling on the primary substantive factual finding of the Colorado district court and the Supreme Court: that Mr Trump is an insurrectionist, irrespective of whether the 14th amendment can be applied by states, or is self-executing, or anything else.

That’s hardly a great look or much of a win. Not only did the Supreme Court duck the key holding that Mr Trump is an insurrectionist, so did his own attorneys. No one challenged this adjudication, thereby leaving it standing unopposed.

Mr Trump will therefore enter the general election campaign as a legally adjudicated insurrectionist as well as having been found liable for sexual abuse and defamation of the writer E Jean Carroll. Another recently decided New York case establishes him as a legally adjudicated serial fraudster and tax cheat. Among 91 pending felony charges, he faces a looming trial involving hush-money payments to an adult actress.

Mr Biden is old and clearly showing his age. So is Mr Trump, who keeps confusing the current president with Barack Obama, among other glaring mistakes. But only one of the two elderly men with memory lapses is also a legally adjudicated wrongdoer in numerous disturbing cases, and may well be a convicted felon before the election.

Let that sink in. With the American public, it hasn’t yet. But it will.