USAnalysis

Biden and Trump clinch presidential nominations on another deeply strange day

A bitter, morally exhausting contest between the two is confirmed after Biden wins the Georgia Democratic primary and Trump takes Republican primaries in three states

US president Joe Biden clinched the Democratic nomination by winning the party's primary in Georgia. Photograph: Megan Varner/Getty Images

Keith Duggan's face
Keith Duggan Washington Correspondent
Wed Mar 13 2024 - 06:50

There was a neat symmetry on Tuesday evening in Joe Biden clinching the Democratic nomination for the US presidency by winning – with no opposition – the party’s primary in Georgia, one of the most contentious states in the 2020 election.

Just hours later, his adversary Donald Trump quickly followed: after winning the Republican primaries in Georgia and Mississippi, the results from Washington state pushed him over the threshold.

A bitter, morally exhausting presidential race between two ageing, returning candidates – a scenario the majority of American voters made clear they do not want – was rendered official.

Both men will have to wait until high summer and the respective conventions for the confetti and the speechifying.

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But it said something about the oddly lopsided and thematically exhausting nature of the primaries that a left-field announcement on Tuesday evening by wild card independent candidate Robert Kennedy Jr generated more excitement.

Kennedy announced he was looking at New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers, an established folk hero in the gridiron game, as his potential running mate – not news that is likely to thrill Jets fans but at least Rodgers would make for a new face in the election.

Rodgers shares with Kennedy a pronounced scepticism in relation to Covid-19 vaccines and if he agrees to run with Kennedy – who is also looking at Jesse Ventura, the former governor of Minnesota and wrestling celebrity, as a potential election partner – he would find himself thrust quickly into a new spotlight.

Kennedy needs to select his running mate ahead of deadlines in states that require a vice-presidential candidate to be identified before he petitions for ballot access. In another week in which the current and former presidents sucked up much of the oxygen, the ritzy idea of a Kennedy/Rodgers ticket was a salient reminder of the havoc the 70-year-old Kennedy could yet wreak on the general election as a third-party independent candidate.

Former president Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally in Rome, Georgia. Photograph: Nicole Craine/New York Times

Kennedy’s lingering presence is an intriguing footnote to another day in an election campaign that could justifiably be classified as deeply strange. Much of Tuesday was taken up with a hearing on Capitol Hill during which Democratic and Republican House members grilled Robert Hur, the special counsel appointed to investigate Joe Biden’s mishandling of classified documents when he was vice-president. Hur opted against bringing charges, describing the president as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory”.

Once again, remarks on the mental faculties of both Biden and Trump were bandied around the Capitol building in what was a grim spectacle of mutual point-scoring.

Biden issued a statement when Georgia was projected in his favour minutes after voting closed. Declaring himself “honoured” to have earned the nomination and noting that the US was making progress, he offered a stark warning.

“Amid this progress we face a sobering reality. Freedom and democracy are at risk here in a way they have not been since the civil war. Donald Trump is running a campaign of resentment, revenge and retribution that threaten the very idea of America. Voters have a choice to make about the very future of this country. Are we going to stand up and defend our democracy or let others tear it down?”

The words seem particularly salient in Georgia, where the 2020 results hinged on just 12,000 votes out of more than five million cast. The result was a narrow win for Biden and Trump’s attempts to overturn that result have resulted in criminal charges against him and a number of associates brought by the state of Georgia.

The preamble to that case saw an extraordinary hearing in the Fulton county courthouse to establish whether district attorney Fani Willis should be removed from the case over allegations of misconduct revolving around a romantic relationship with the lead prosecutor, whom she hired for the case.

Judge Scott McAfee said in a recent radio interview that he would deliver his verdict on that matter before the end of the week.

“I gave myself a deadline because I knew everyone wanted an answer. And I’ll tell you an order like this takes time to write. There is a lot that I have to go through. I’ve had a rough draft and an outline before I ever heard a rumour that someone wanted to run for this position. So, the result is not going to change because of politics. I am calling it as best I can and the law as I understand it,” he said.

The judge’s decision will have monumental consequences. If he removes Willis from the case, a new prosecution team will have to assembed – almost certainly putting a trial beyond the November election.

And Fulton county will command a laser focus of Democratic and Republican strategists in the months ahead. The knife-edge nature of the 2020 election in Georgia places it as a definite swing-state next November, and Tuesday night’s voting patterns revealed where the floating votes reside.

While Donald Trump took 84 per cent of the Republican vote in Georgia, former candidate Nikki Haley, whose name was on the ballot, attracted almost 14 per cent – more than 67,000 votes. Her numbers remained stubbornly high in Chatham County, flush against the border with her home state of South Carolina, and urban counties like Fulton (39 per cent Haley on Tuesday night) and Gwinnett, the once-Republican suburb of Atlanta (23 per cent Haley), mirroring the urban-rural divide that has played out throughout the Republican primaries.

Where those votes fall in November could define the outcome of the election.

At 11.11pm eastrern time, Donald Trump was officially announced as the Republican presidential nominee for the third successive time, confirming an obliteration of the illusions alternative candidates entertained. But for Vermont’s endorsement of Nikki Haley, he would have had a clean sweep.

So begins just the seventh presidential rematch in US history and the first since 1956, when Dwight Eisenhower defeated Adlai Stevenson II for the second time.

And it is only March: the month for the madness of the college basketball tournament and St Patrick’s Day parades – and unseemly early for the official beginning of a historic election for which, sooner or later, the American public must brace itself.

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