Trump’s on a high but it’s all to play for in November
IF YOU think the UK is badly divided, look across the pond. US politics is in shambles. It goes far beyond a broken app which meant the Iowa Caucus took days to report results in the Democrats’ selecting of a presidential nominee.
Trust has hit rock bottom. Cross-party relationships have utterly frayed, as the Left and the Right drift further apart.
According to communications marketing firm Edelman, only one third of Americans now trust government to do “what is right”.
Americans aren’t just angry about the state of political affairs, but tired of its dominance in the national conversation. The UK’S recent relatively snappy, decisive election is the perfect contrast to the United States’s never-ending cycle of elections and campaigning.
The shock – and for some, horror – of Donald Trump’s victory in 2016 sent the Left spiralling back into campaign mode from his first day in post. The President has only provoked them further, by continuing to host ostentatious and divisive campaign rallies.
It’s a long-running joke Stateside that the President only gets a shot at governing if he wins a second term in office – but this has become an unhealthy reality. Even if laws are drafted and by some miracle find bipartisan support, nothing is voted upon by either party without the next election acting as their central focus.
For a nation that needs a break from politics (America had no Megxit distraction, after all), there’s been no rest, just months of party feuds.
The Democratic primaries have turned into a much longer, uglier battle than was expected.what started as a relatively united front between Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren to drag America further to the Left with higher taxes and more red tape soon became a mudslinging match after Warren’s team claimed Sanders had said a woman could not be elected president.
Meanwhile the shambolic roll-out of the Iowa Caucus results has added yet more conspiracy theories to the pot.
What should have been a game-changing moment for Mayor Pete Buttigieg from Indiana, with an unexpected win, turned into a PR nightmare as he was labelled “Mayor Cheat” for declaring himself victorious before any results were in. But he was right.
Even more draining has been the impeachment and acquittal of Donald Trump over the past six weeks. This landmark for US democracy was not defined by rigorous assessment of the President’s dealings with the Ukrainian President from either side, but by partisan politics.
Much has been made of Senator and former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s decision to vote with the Democrats on one of the two articles of impeachment – the first time in history a senator has voted against a
President in their own party. While Romney described the President’s behaviour as “an appalling abuse of public trust”, he has been described as the only Republican who fell for the Democrat’s “impeachment trick”. Out of the 535 representatives in Congress, only Romney and four Democrats in the House of Representatives broke party ranks.
DESPITE the impeachment defining everything that’s broken about America’s political system, many are describing last week as Trump’s best yet. His acquittal has fired up his base ahead of November’s election. They view the impeachment as yet another attempt by the Democrats to smear him.
But it’s not just Trump and his base who think he’s had a good week. In a serendipitously-timed State of the Union address, he turned a round-up of yearly events into a reality TV show featuring special guests, awards, rivalry (refusing to shake Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s hand) and made-for-tv moments, including reunifying a sergeant with his family after his fourth tour in the Middle East.
Trump touted America’s strong economy in his speech – and it seems to have resonated. A poll on the night by CBS News and Yougov found 76 per cent of respondents approved of his speech, coinciding with other polling which bumps Trump up to some of his highest approval ratings yet.
Pelosi may have ripped up his speech in front of the cameras, but it seems Trump’s positive messaging will ring true for many, as last week Americans reported record-high optimism about their personal finances.
This is not to say the President has won over the nation going into November’s election. He remains one of our most controversial political figures. But the common narrative – that Trump is on the out and the Democrats are on the up – is being challenged. If the Democrats are to take back the Oval Office, they’re going to need to coalesce around a candidate who stands for more than just disdain for Trump.
Election-mode was never switched off, but it’s about to be kicked up a notch.weary as Americans are, everyone is about to wake up. It’s going to be a bumpy ride to November.
‘Democrat candidate must stand for more than disdain for Trump’