At this point the U.S. presidential election of 2024 seems almost decided.
Today it looks likely that Donald Trump will again become president.
Trump has won the New Hampshire primary and the only other Republican candidate still in the race is the neo-conservative candidate Nicki Halley:
Donald Trump marched closer to the Republican nomination with a sweep of the first two contests, defeating former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley on Tuesday as voters turned out in projected record numbers in New Hampshire’s primary.
Trump’s lead here was decisive enough for the Associated Press to project his win shortly after polls closed. With nearly 75 percent of the vote tallied, Trump led Haley by about 11 percentage points.
…
Trump’s victory dealt another blow to critics in his party who saw the New Hampshire race as perhaps the last best chance to stop or slow him.
Halley is kept in the race by some billionaire donations, including from those who tend to donate to Democrats, in an effort to somehow still damage Trump:
Despite her shrinking path to halting Trump’s march to the Republican nomination, Haley’s showing in New Hampshire hinged on independents, who are permitted to vote in this state’s Republican primary.
…
New Hampshire voters in the Republican primary split about evenly between people who were registered as Republicans and those registered as independent or undeclared, with a tiny share saying they were not registered to vote before Election Day, according to early exit polls. Independents and undeclared registered voters supported Haley by about a 2-to-1 margin, while registered Republicans supported Trump by about 3 to 1.
The hope of the Halley supporters is that other open primaries may still give her a lead. Democrats turned Independents could flood such elections and make her look like a winner:
Haley’s campaign manager, Betsy Ankney, released a memo as voting began Tuesday vowing to fight on through Super Tuesday in March, despite pre-primary polls showing Trump with a widening lead here and less favorable contests ahead for Haley. The memo argued that outperforming with independents could buoy her after South Carolina. Michigan has an open primary, and 11 of the 16 Super Tuesday states also allow non-Republicans to vote to some extent.
New Hampshire has already shown that this concept does not work as well as presumed.
President Joe Biden does not have to fear any primary challengers. His party is stuck with him. This despite some awful polling data that should have pushed the Democrats to retire Joe Biden.
Only 38.9% of voters approve of Biden and his policies while 55.7 % disapprove them.
Trump numbers are better. 43.1 % have a favorable opinion of him while 51.8% find him unfavorable.
General election polls have Trump leading over Biden by 5%.
There is little chance for Biden to turn this around. There is nothing in the policy queue that could be seen as a win for him. On domestic issues he is limited by a Republican majority in the House. Problem areas are the perceived state of the economy as well his failure to stop mass immigration. He is also losing in the foreign policy frame. His war in Ukraine is near total failure and the U.S. position in the Middle East is about to explode.
Trump still has dozens of open (kangaroo) court cases against him. But it is doubtful that any court will truly dare to put the leading presidential candidate into jail. In the end a conservative Supreme Court, and enraged Republican voters, would anyway find a way to get Trump out of the mess.
On foreign policy issues Trump has a rather dubious record. But I agree with Stephen Walt who finds that there are only few differences between Trump's and Biden's foreign policies. It is the deep state which is anyway formulating as well as executing them.
But is still more likely that Trump will find a way out of the mess in Ukraine than Biden. Trump is also way less a Zionist than Biden. His opinion about Netanyahoo and settlers is generally low.
My opinion on Trump is unchanged. He is just a run of the mill U.S. president. His biggest fault is his inability to select good people and to keep control over what they are doing. Previous Trump selections like McMaster, Bolton or Pompeo were all too radical and treacherous. They should never have been chosen. For someone who once had a reality show about selecting apprentices that is an astonishingly bad record.
Or, as Stephen Walt expresses it:
To be clear, I’m not saying that this election will have zero effect on U.S. foreign policy. Trump may try to take the United States out of NATO, for example, although such a move would undoubtedly face enormous resistance from the foreign and defense policy establishment. He may focus primarily on his domestic agenda—and his lingering legal troubles—which would further reduce his already-limited interest in foreign affairs and tend to reinforce the existing status quo. Trump was a poor judge of foreign-policy talent during his first term (and provoked unprecedented rates of staff turnover), and that tendency may hamstring U.S. policy implementation and lead foreign governments to hedge even more. There would be subtle differences between Biden 2 and Trump 2, but I’d bet against a radical transformation.
My concern with U.S. foreign policy is the huge damage it is causing all over the world. I see Trump as the better candidate to minimize that. He has avoided wars as far as the deep state allowed him to do so.
One can not say that of Biden.