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Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
CNN
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Labor Day traditionally marks the final stretch of the presidential campaign, but this year’s hectic and condensed schedule means the key marker will be the holiday marking the start of summer, rather than the holiday marking its end.
Monday’s Memorial Day holiday will be the prelude to a fiercely contested presidential election that is already expected to be narrowly contested and will almost certainly be narrowed down to a few thousand votes in just a few battleground states. The showdown between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump will likely intensify as two presidents each fight for a second term for only the second time in history.
The unprecedented nature of the 2024 presidential election will be immediately underscored Tuesday when Trump returns to a Manhattan courtroom to face his first criminal trial. He is accused of falsifying financial records to cover up hush payments he made to an adult-film actress before the 2016 election. (He has pleaded not guilty and denies having an alleged affair with her.) After a month-long trial, lawyers for both sides will lay out their cases in closing arguments, after which the judge will hand the historic task to jurors of deciding for the first time whether to convict a former president and presumptive nominee.
While the presidential race is very stable with neither candidate able to break away, it remains unclear how a conviction or acquittal in this race will affect a polarized nation. Will Trump’s historic blemish of a felony conviction further alienate critical suburban battleground state voters who could decide the outcome of the election? Or will Trump’s successful promotion of the claim that he is the victim of a politically motivated prosecution negate the impact of a conviction? The former president will almost certainly use his acquittal to argue that the other three criminal charges are baseless. And since those cases are unlikely to go to trial before the November election, Trump’s legally tangled race will suddenly look more like a traditional one. However, it will be one featuring the most unconventional ex-president of modern times, who tried to subvert democracy after losing the last election to Biden.
As soon as the verdict is announced in New York, attention will shift to the unusually early first presidential debate to be broadcast on CNN at the end of June. Biden, who has always trailed somewhat in the polls in battleground states, is keen to have an earlier-than-usual head-to-head match that could change the course of the race. The president also wants the American people to focus on Trump’s brutal and anti-democratic character and how radical his second term will be, which his rivals say they will spend in retaliation. Presidential debates are traditionally held in the fall, but the widespread use of early voting and mail-in ballots is a reason to bring the debate forward. The second presidential debate is scheduled for September on ABC, and Trump has asked for more one-on-one confrontations with Biden, but the presidential campaign has resisted his request.
With the Trump trial adjourned ahead of Memorial Day, Thursday was a preview of how the rest of the campaign will play out. Biden argued that a new bill approved by the Louisiana state legislature to classify abortion pills as controlled substances was “a direct result of Trump’s overturning of Roe v. Wade.” He was referring to the conservative Supreme Court majority that Trump built that eradicated constitutional abortion rights nationwide. “This is a frightening time for women across this country. If Donald Trump gets back to power, he will try to do all across the country what’s happening in states like Louisiana,” Biden said.
Abortion is one of the few issues where polls show Biden receiving higher support than Trump, and Democrats are hoping it will boost turnout at a time when the durability of Biden’s electoral coalition is in serious doubt. The former president’s ambivalence on abortion, and his recent stance that decisions on the issue should be left to the states, does little to protect him politically whenever conservative states or judges take strong anti-abortion positions.
Another important development to watch this summer is whether former President Biden can maintain his support among minority voters, who have shown unusual strength for a Republican. Biden has taken emergency steps to solidify his support in communities that typically vote overwhelmingly Democratic. For example, he released two new ads on Thursday implicitly accusing Trump of being racist and recalling the former president’s call for the death penalty for the Central Park Five, a group of minority teenagers who were innocently accused of assaulting and raping women in New York’s Central Park in the 1980s. The ads also reminded voters of Trump’s racist conspiracy theories about former President Barack Obama’s birthplace. The Trump campaign has accused Biden of trying to “gaslight black voters,” highlighting that as a senator he supported a 1990s crime bill that increased the incarceration rate of black Americans.
In what he called an attempt to reach out to black and Hispanic voters, the former president held a rally in the Bronx on Thursday, a rare visit by a Republican to one of the country’s most heavily Democratic counties. The former president used the opportunity to make the case that minorities are suffering because of an out-of-control immigration problem that was at the heart of his campaign. “The biggest impact, the biggest negative impact of all these millions of people coming into this country is on black and Hispanic residents. They’re losing their jobs, they’re losing their homes, they’re losing everything they have to lose,” Trump said.
Trump’s event came after Biden visited Morehouse College in Georgia over the weekend, the alma mater of Martin Luther King Jr., where he took a dark aim at Trump and his right-wing supporters, warning that “when old ghosts in new clothes come to power, extremists come to take away the freedoms you thought were yours, and all of us’s.”
In his Moor House speech, Biden also sought to defend himself against a weakness he faces as the campaign nears its final stretch: anger among younger and progressive voters over his support for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the height of Israel’s Gaza war that has killed tens of thousands of civilians. “This is one of the most difficult and complex issues in the world,” Biden said, adding that he is working around the clock toward a ceasefire and the establishment of a Palestinian state in the distant future. “Nothing is easy. I know this angers and frustrates many of you, including my family. But most of all, I know this breaks your heart, and mine does.”
But on Thursday, the president was reminded of the backlash against U.S. policy toward Israel as another wave of protests similar to those rocking college campuses across the country erupted. At a mostly peaceful protest in Los Angeles, demonstrators chanted “Divest now!”, demanding that UCLA divest from all investments linked to Israel. A return of large-scale protests before the election or at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August could favor Trump, who claims law and order are out of control under Biden, and raise further questions about the president’s ability to garner strong support from young and progressive voters. Biden is eager to see a de-escalation in the Gaza conflict over the summer, but Netanyahu shows no signs of responding to his calls to de-escalate the conflict.
The president also expects the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates this summer, as he has long expected. A cut in interest rates could bring some relief to Americans tired of high housing and auto costs and supermarket prices. The financial crisis has marred Biden’s reputation for managing the economy, despite strong growth and low unemployment, and given Trump the advantage on the issue that decides most U.S. elections. The former president had painted an idealized vision for the economy during his term before the COVID-19 pandemic triggered its collapse.
“Costs have gone up so much,” Trump said in the Bronx. “I don’t eat bacon anymore. It’s too expensive,” the billionaire former real estate mogul said.
Inflation has fallen sharply, to 3.4% year-on-year last month, well below a 40-year high hit after the pandemic, but many Americans have yet to feel the impact on their wallets, one reason Trump has an advantage in the traditional election question that asks voters whether they are better off than they were four years ago.