Analysis: With trials in sight, Trump appears ahead of Biden in polls in swing states

With a year to go until Election Day 2024, former President Donald Trump is expected to testify in a civil fraud trial and will separately face more than 90 criminal charges, raising the possibility that a convicted felon will lead the Republican ticket in November of next year.

But it’s President Joe Biden’s political prospects that are sinking.

In another extraordinary turn of events in the 2024 campaign, which is more notable for the court hearings than the treks through early voting states, Trump is expected to be called to the witness stand in New York on Monday.

This is not typical activity during a post-presidency. But Trump was, after all, the most unconventional president.

Meanwhile, Biden is digesting brutal new polls that show him trailing Republican Party leader Trump in several key swing states.

The numbers are likely to spark panic among Democrats and renew doubts among Americans that the man who will soon turn 81 is about to serve a second full term.

If the New York Times/Siena College poll is confirmed in 2024, there would be no electoral path to victory for Biden.

And an increasingly authoritarian Trump – who promises a second term of “retribution” – could manage to return to the White House, despite triggering an insurrection at the Capitol with his false claims of electoral fraud in 2020.

“I was worried before these polls and I’m worried now,” Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut told CNN on Sunday (5).

“These presidential disputes in the last elections were very close. No one is going to have a loose election here. It will require a lot of hard work, concentration and resources. And so we have our work cut out for us.”

The overlapping crises facing Trump and Biden belie the fact that, for all their shortcomings, neither has yet faced a serious challenger within their parties as they seek the nomination.

Biden’s standing is weakening as he faces cascading global threats – such as war in the Middle East – abandons support for his management of the economy and sees fissures in the multiracial coalition that elected him in the first place.

It also reflects a divided and disconsolate nation, which seeks the illusory normality that the president promised three years ago, after the pandemic and the historic turmoil of the Trump administration.

The poll is also sure to renew the question of whether Biden is right to insist on running again, although some Democrats argue that the time to rally behind a different candidate may have passed.

“It’s too late to change horses,” wrote David Axelrod, a former senior strategist for President Barack Obama and senior political analyst at CNN on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Axelrod said Biden had challenged conventional wisdom before, but that the latest polls would send “tremors of doubt throughout the party.”

Trump’s strength in New York Times and other polls will, however, provoke anxiety around the world as it dawns on the realization that a second Trump term could destroy the post-World War II Western alliance system and effectively hand over the Ukraine to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Polls in the modern era are rarely a foolproof indicator so far removed from an election and only provide a snapshot. Several events that will shape the 2024 race have not yet taken place.

Biden’s supporters argue that his critics and the media narratives defined by the president’s weak polls seriously ignore the most salient point that will define the 2024 elections.

Once the binary choice between Biden and Trump becomes clear, they say, the electorate will inevitably side with a president whose warnings in last year’s midterm elections that Republicans could crush U.S. democracy had much more successful than experts expected.

And the economy – which is fundamentally strong in terms of jobs and growth – could turn more in Biden’s favor over the next 12 months, with all attention focused on high prices and interest rates.

The impact of third-party candidates on elections and how a chaotic Republican Party in the House could shape voter sentiment are also unknown factors.

And while Trump’s devoted followers have come to believe his claims that his criminal danger is all political persecution by the Biden administration, there is no precedent for the startling prospect of a former president and potential candidate being tried in an election year.

Trump on the witness stand

The biggest test yet of Trump’s strategy of turning his criminal danger into an electoral advantage will unfold in a New York courtroom on Monday (6).

Americans are simply not used to the idea of ​​their former leaders taking oaths on the witness stand. It’s a scenario more familiar in fragile developing countries abroad than in the world’s most powerful democracy.

Because this is a civil trial, Trump has no criminal liability. But the judge has already ruled that Trump, his adult children and the Trump Organization committed “persistent and repeated” fraud.

Now the judge is considering a claim from New York Attorney General Letitia James for $250 million and a ban on Trump doing business in the state where he made his name.

Although the trial will not be televised, Trump has characteristically sought to turn his court appearances into a devastating drama, with his speeches outside the courtroom about injustice and his scathing attacks on the attorney general, judge and court staff raising fears for security. from them.

The former president seeks to destroy the credibility of the judicial system that seeks to hold him accountable. His strategy shows that he remains an even greater threat to the US democratic system than he was when he left Washington after failing to stop Biden’s victory.

Testifying under oath is a complicated task for a former president known for making false claims. The law offers less impunity than he enjoys for spreading falsehoods during the campaign. Still, Trump also defends his beloved business, his legacy and his family’s future.

Temidayo Aganga-Williams, former senior investigative counsel for the House committee on the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, says the former president’s behavior could depend on how his legal team thinks the case is progressing.

“We saw the Donald Trump of the rallies, who is loud, offensive, aggressive, and then we saw a Donald Trump, in testimony, who was a little more controlled about his words, speaking a little more softly,” Aganga-Williams told CNN on Friday (3).

“If they think all is lost, they may decide to adopt a more aggressive, public-facing strategy where it’s not about what’s happening with the verdict.”

Trump’s defenses in his areas of criminal responsibility turned into a campaign strategy based on his repeated and false claims that the 2020 elections were stolen. The former president faces a federal trial that begins in March in Washington, stemming from his attempt to overturn the 2020 election.

He and his associates were also indicted in Fulton County, Georgia, on election-related racketeering charges.

Trump was also indicted by special counsel Jack Smith for alleged mishandling of confidential documents he kept at his Florida resort after leaving office. And he is facing trial on his first criminal charge in a New York case, stemming from a hush-hush payment to an adult film star.

But according to Trump, this is all a new attack of election interference before 2024. He warned, in a fundraising email sent to supporters on Sunday, exactly a year before Election Day, that if Biden and the Democrats win, “it will happen again and again – and America will NEVER have genuine elections again.”

Biden sinks deeper into the political quagmire

Given that the presumptive Republican presidential nominee faces potential conviction after serving a single term in the White House that culminated in a second impeachment over his involvement in an insurrection, the question for Biden should be: Why is the nascent 2024 race getting even?

Research from The New York Times and Siena College suggests that Trump has opened up a lead over Biden on the economy, immigration, national security and the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Biden, however, is more credible on abortion — a potential booster of Democratic turnout and a problem for the Republican Party in 2024.

In Nevada, where Biden narrowly won in 2020, Trump leads with 52%, compared to Biden’s 41%. Trump leads in Georgia, a state where he faces racketeering charges, with 49% to Biden’s 43%. The former president leads 49% to 44% in Arizona, another important state. In Michigan, where Trump won in 2016 and Biden won in 2020, the Republican rose 5 points.

The poll shows Biden’s weakening among black and Hispanic voters. And 71% of respondents said he is too old to be an effective president, while just 39% said the same of Trump – who is 77 years old.

Spencer Weiss, a Pennsylvania voter cited by the New York Times who supported Biden in 2020 and now supports Trump, said, “The world is falling apart under Biden.” He added: “I would much rather see someone who I think could be a positive model leader for the country. But at least I think Trump can act quickly if something unexpected happens.”

Biden’s campaign mocked polls a year before the election and argued that “our popular and winning agenda” would trump “unpopular extremism from US Republicans.” [slogan] ‘Make America Great Again’.” But there were real signs of anxiety among Democrats on Sunday.

In addition to Blumenthal, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, warned that Biden was suffering because of his staunch support for Israel despite the relentless vendetta against Gaza following the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attacks.

The Washington state lawmaker said that for the “first time” she thought Biden’s re-election hopes were “in big trouble” because of “Muslim Americans, Arab Americans, but also young people, who see this conflict as a moral conflict and a moral crisis.”