To hear Donald Trump say it, it's a ridiculous injustice that he has to spend four days a week in a Manhattan courtroom just because he's on trial for 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. he laments this “I'm not campaigning in Georgia or Florida or North Carolina the way I should.”
Never mind that last Wednesday, during a day off from the trial, Mr. Trump spent all day golfing at a club in Bedminster, N.J. Hey, important states like Pennsylvania are really far away. is! (Mr. Trump is scheduled to visit Wisconsin and Michigan this Wednesday.)
Welcome to the non-election campaign of 2024. There, President Trump spends most of his time in court, while President Biden is sticking to his usual light schedule of events and private fundraisers. Oddly, in a presidential election year, neither the incumbent nor his potential challenger, the quasi-incumbent former president, has any need to maintain a busy campaign schedule. These two old men are the ultimate quantities known. Americans already know what they think of themselves. An “undecided” voter is simply someone debating which unpalatable option to settle for.
Mr. Trump can coast until the Republican convention in mid-July, and Mr. Biden until mid-August. The pace inevitably picks up after that, but still, don't expect the customary frenzy of campaign appearances.
Indeed, for these two candidates, campaigning may present an opportunity to make avoidable mistakes. Given how often Mr. Biden comes across as sluggish and forgetful and how often Mr. Trump comes across as a raging lunatic, the candidate who spends less time in front of cameras and audiences between now and November is more likely to win the election. You may have a good chance of winning. Public appearances simply remind voters of what they don't like about their choices.
Is there anything you say when you stop at an ice cream shop that dramatically changes your opinion of Biden? The words President Trump yells at a MAGA rally, “Oh, I totally misjudged this guy.” Is there a word that makes you say “ta”?
We're stuck rebroadcasting the choice between the unpopular man in the Oval Office and the unpopular man he'll replace. No wonder a recent NBC News poll found the lowest percentage of voters in nearly 20 years say they have a high level of interest in the 2024 election.
There is still six months, or six months, left until Election Day, but only the few moments between now and then will matter. President Trump's choice of running mate is one of the few remaining unknowns about the story of this year's presidential election. Given the Democratic Party's grassroots anger toward Israel, the Chicago convention could be an ugly repeat of the 1968 convention.
What else? Presidential debate? It's not even clear if there is. Yes, Biden told SiriusXM radio host Howard Stern last week that he would be “happy” to debate Trump. (The Biden campaign has been vague on this point so far.) But some Democrats say the president shouldn't show Trump's dignity by sharing the same stage.
(In other news, the president is avoiding sit-down interviews with the White House press corps, but he's finding time to talk to Stern about not just “smartless.”)
In recent weeks, coverage of Mr. Trump's trial in New York has dominated the news cycle more than the presidential election, and Mr. Biden has shown slight improvement in polls here and there. However, the president's camp cannot be happy about others. A Bloomberg News Morning Consult poll conducted April 8-15 showed Biden trailing in battleground states, and a CNN poll conducted April 18-23 showed him losing ground nationally. It showed Trump leading 49% to 43%.
According to CNN, “If his opponents included independent candidates Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Cornel West, and Green Party candidate Jill Stein, Trump would receive 42% of the vote; Mr. Biden has 33%, Mr. Kennedy has 16%, Mr. West has 4% and Mr. Stein has 33%.'' 3%. In the first binary matchup, Kennedy received 13% each from Biden and Trump supporters. ”
Still, Biden wants to make the election a referendum on Donald Trump, and Trump is doing the same, which could give him a significant advantage in the coming months. The presumptive Republican nominee will intermittently remind himself of the border crisis and the rising cost of living. But almost every day, we know what Trump really wants to talk about: how he's been wronged, how he was the real winner in 2020, how he wants the new Bible to be. What you can get at a high price…almost everything but the most important thing in a voter's life.
Hey, this is what Republican primary voters wanted to happen. Many people on the left, right and center tried to warn of the risks, including that Trump's indictment would likely keep him out of the campaign for a long time. . If 2024 ends with Republicans realizing they missed out on a significantly weaker incumbent, they will have no one to blame but themselves.
Meanwhile, election campaigns continue to be canceled, and two candidates who are the people's wishes are frozen in a state where they are not on the ballot.
