Trump’s poll move causes a flutter

Donald Trump, who had lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden, but who continues to harp that the election was stolen, has announced that he would fight the 2024 presidential election.

The buzz in the American media was that Trump would ride on the predicted Republican ‘wave’ in the mid-term elections and announce his bid for the White House. It has turned out that there was no Republican ‘wave’ and that it has become just a trickle.

The Republicans had failed narrowly to wrest majority in the Senate, but the party got a slim majority in the House of Representatives. Many of the candidates whom Trump had supported had lost the election at the state level as well as at the Congress and Senate levels.

This was felt to be a setback to Trump. But Trump has refused to accept any setback, whether it was the defeat in 2020 presidential election, or the defeat of the candidates he had supported in this year’s mid-term elections, and he has announced that he would be fighting the 2024 presidential election.

President Biden too had said that he would be contesting in 2024 for a second presidential term but he had deferred the formal announcement to early next year.

The presidential election is due in November 2024. So, it is a little too early for Trump and Biden to announce their respective White House so early.

It would be a repeat of the 2020 contest in 2024 if Trump manages to get the Republican nomination, and it is more likely that Biden will get the Democrat nomination for a second term. It is too early to say that Trump will get the Republican nomination.  There will many other Republican presidential candidates, and it looks that the Republican governor of Florida Ron DeSanctis is seen as a prime contender for 2024.

Trump has maintained a strong hold over the Republican party ever since he lost 2020 election, and in spite of the fiasco of the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021 by Trump supporters, which had alienated a strong Trump aide like then vice president Mike Spence. Spence had certified the election as the head of the Senate against Trump’s urging that he should not. He has however refused to depose before the Congressional committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol.

Trump would want to push his case through to a Republican nomination on the basis of his rude rhetoric and the belief of some Republicans that he is still popular with the Republican voters. Trump has never cared much for political norms and niceties, and he becomes a problematic rival both for his fellow-Republicans as well the Democrats. Biden’s aides seem to believe that if there is to be a repeat of the 2020 contest, more Democrat voters would come out to vote because Trump is seen as someone not playing by the rulebook and he is seen as a threat to American democracy.

He is facing a Federal probe of violating laws of secrecy in taking away confidential documents when he left the White House, and he faces a Congressional committee probe into his role for the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol.

But Trump is known to have no concern for the inquiries because he dismisses them as politically motivated, and he does not believe that he has done any wrong even if he is on the wrong side of the law. It is this dangerous self-righteousness and self-confidence that makes him both an attractive figure for a certain section of the Americans even as he is seen as someone subverting American democracy by his opponents.

Whether he gets the Republican nomination or not, and whether he will fight as an independent candidate if he does not get the party ticket, Trump has caused a flutter in the American political circles by his announcement that he will be fighting the 2024 presidential election.