US President Joe Biden tasted defeat for the first time on March 5 in his bid for re-election as president of the US. The incumbent president’s defeat on ‘Super Tuesday’ at the hands of a hitherto unknown employee of a technology company in Baltimore on the US east coast was bad enough. An unkinder cut was that more than half the voters who took part in the Democratic party’s caucus in American Samoa endorsed winner Jason Palmer’s clarion call that the US needs a president “who is more of the 21st century than Joe Biden”. Biden is already the oldest occupant of the White House. Biden’s advanced age of 81 has been an albatross around his neck ever since he decided to seek re-election.
American Samoa is a picture postcard US ‘territory’ in the Pacific with only about 50,000 residents. Following the caucus results, the territory will send six delegates to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August, which will choose the party’s presidential candidate for the November election. Palmer, who secured 56 percent votes at the caucus will have three delegates at the convention.
Biden, who got 44 percent, will also have three delegates from American Samoa. Never mind their small size and population, no one can miss the colourful and noisy delegations at party conventions from territories like American Samoa and Virgin Islands. Or for that matter, from Hawaii, which by contrast is a full-fledged state. These delegates sing and dance at convention venues amplifying their Polynesian, West African or Hispanic cultures and traditions. Unfortunately, political participation by US territories ends with caucuses and party conventions: territories have no representation in the electoral college which certifies the election of a new president. Only states have that privilege.
On Super Tuesday, so called because 15 American states hold their primaries or caucuses on that day, Republican Donald Trump also suffered a significant defeat in the only state since this year’s presidential election cycle got off the ground. His last opponent for the Republican nomination, Indian-American Nimarata ‘Nikki’ Randhawa Haley, won the party primary in the state of Vermont in the New England region of the US. Haley’s only other win before suspending her campaign was in the District of Columbia, which includes the national capital, Washington. But it is not a state, only a ‘district’, somewhat similar to a Union territory in India.
The defeats that caucus-goers and primary voters handed out to front-runners Biden and Trump should not be understated for their significance. They are straws in the wind for November, and hence, a lengthy extrapolation in this column.
Vermont is perhaps the most liberal state in the US. In many ways, it is where the ‘American dream’,’ lives on even as the classic, once-exquisite, dream has turned sour in much of the continental US. It is, for example, only one of the two states, where common areas like waterfronts, promenades and beaches are state-mandated public trusts for the benefit of all Vermonters. They cannot be usurped by real estate developers unlike in much of America.
New England currently offers a beacon of hope to move away from the two-party system, which has deteriorated into tightlycontrolled politics that is not very different from one-party rule and offers little by way of pluralism. Vermont’s Bernie Sanders is one of three US Senators who are ‘independent’”. Vermont’s Republican Governor Phil Scott is one of the Grand Old Party’s (GOP) regional leaders who is still standing even though he has not jumped onto the Trump bandwagon. Support of Scott and several Republican state legislators made Haley’s win in Vermont possible.
Before Vermont, in New Hampshire, Haley lost to Trump, but with a respectable show of strength among primary voters. It is a state where Democrats are not allowed to vote in the Republican primary, unlike some other states . However, voters who are registered as independents can take part. Forty-four percent of voters in New Hampshire’s Republican primary identified themselves as independents and nearly 60 percent of them voted for Haley.
About the same percentage of graduate voters favoured Haley. A majority of households that earned $1,00,000 or more annually voted for Haley, while an overwhelming number who earned half that figure or less voted for Trump en masse. A swing state in recent ground-level politics, New Hampshire’s voting trends are indicative of the outcome of a rematch between Trump and Biden in November.
The voting trends cited above make it difficult at the national level for Trump to defeat Biden in the presidential vote. While Trump’s supporters remain highly motivated, the Republican campaign appears unable to make inroads among independents, undecided voters and conservative Democrats, who will together decide the outcome in November. Trump may also fail to enlist the support of ‘Log Cabin Republicans’ who support lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights and such policies. The group did not endorse Trump in the 2016 election, when he first embraced the GOP. The outcomes in most states are already predictable.
States with big representations in the electoral college such as California and New York will remain Democrat while Texas will decisively vote for a Republican president. It is the swing states which will decide the next occupant of the White House. Since both parties have presumptive candidates unusually early this time , primaries in the remaining states will be a formality. New Hampshire is one of the few states whose primary outcome can be analysed to make predictions.
Abortion was cited by New Hampshire residents as among the four issues that mattered to them the most in choosing the next president. Trump got merely 26 percent support among those for whom abortion was a touchstone in voting. That remains a big plus for Biden. His apple cart may, however, be upset by an emerging election issue. The president’s support for Israel. His campaign is trying to mollify traditional Democrat vote banks which have turned against Biden over Israeli bombardment of Gaza. If the peace efforts fail, states like Michigan and Minnesota may go against Biden and pave the way for Trump’s re-election.
(Views are personal)
KP Nayar, Strategic Analyst
(kpnayar@gmail.com)