AT PENPOINT
Donald Trump managed to pull off something not done by anyone in the 20th century, which was to win re-election after having been defeated after one term. This was achieved only once before in US history, by Grover Cleveland in 1884 and 1892. He had been defeated in 1888 by William H. Harrison, the grandson of Benjamin Harrison, elected back in 1840, who caught a cold at his inauguration, and died of pneumonia five months later. Cleveland had his revenge, and beat Harrison when he squared off again in 1892.
Harrison was typical. Like other one-term Presidents, he did not contest the Presidency again. Even now, a one-term President, Jimmy Carter, is alive (and now Joe Biden will be). However, Trump did not fade into the background after his 2020 defeat, but consolidated his hold over the Republican Party, and ran again.
Though Cleveland was a Democrat unlike Trump, he was also a New Yorker. True, he was from Buffalo, of which he was one Mayor, unlike Trump, who is from the city of New York, but they were from the same state. (The New York luck has not applied to other New Yorkers: Thomas Dewey went down on the Republican ticket to Harry Truman in 1948.)
Whether he would have beaten Biden, to whom he lost in 20120, is unknown. Biden had to pull out after winning the Democratic nomination in the primaries, because the first debate between the two candidates showed that he was fumbling for words. As he was 82, that was a cause for concern. He flubbed his words in public appearances after that, and finally decided to withdraw from the race. It was perhaps fortunate for all concerned that he did so before the Democratic Convention, in Chicago.
/chicago had a peculiar symbolism for Democrats. In 1968, it hosted the Convention which is memorable for two things. First, there were clashes between demonstrators and the police. Second, the sitting and eligible President, Lyndon B. Johnson, was not seeking the nomination. The reason he was not seeking renomination was that it seemed he was tarnished too badly with his commitment to the Vietnam War, and Democrat leaders feared that he was certain to be beaten, and would drag down other Democrats. Eerily, those are the same arguments used for Biden’s stepping aside.
The antiwar candidate Eugene McCarthy had challenged Johnson in the New Hampshire primary; he had finished a strong second, and Johnson pulled out. Robert F. Kennedy then entered the race, and would probably have been the nominee had he not been assassinated in June by Sirhan Sirhan, a Jordanian citizen of Palestinian origin, who had migrated with his family to the USA in 1956. That was the first sign of the Palestine-Israel conflict having an impact on US politics.
This year such an impact was expected, because the Israeli invasion of Gaza and the IDF’s coldblooded massacre of Palestinians had led to younger people displaying an unprecedented revulsion against Israel. However, no protests disrupted the convention, and the hopes placed by Democrats on Michigan, one of the swing states, and which had helped Biden win in 2020, proved wrong. The only state where enough Palestinians resided to make a difference, it failed to do so.
One factor was probably that Biden, Harris and Trump were all seen as equally pro-Israel. There does not seem to be any way that any of them could very well be more pro-Israel. This seems to have prevented the anti-Trump vote. There seems to have been an error in assuming that Arab voters were single-issue voters.
If Biden and Harris had been pro-Palestinian, they would have created a conflict in the minds of Arab voters, but they also had Biden’s record to defend. So they had to defend a poor economic record, something which the US voter has never forgiven. They also had to defend the Immigration record, as well as the USA’s declining power in the world.
The Democrat leadership seems to have done something that the great Albert Einstein defined as stupidity: going the same thing and expecting a different result. In 1968, when Johnson had pulled out, he was going to be replaced by Bobby Kennedy. If he had lived, he would probably have won, beating the eventual Republican nominee, Richard Nixon, much as his elder brother John had defeated him in 1960. However he was assassinated, so the Vice-President, Hubert H. Humphtrey was pitched in, just as Kamala Harris was. He lost. So what did Harris have that would have enabled her to win?
Biden’s domestic record was apparently not enough. The economy has been enough to defeat a sitting President. Generally, after a first term, US Presidents tend to get re-elected, and because of this, any President seeking nomination for a second term has only been refused once (Chester Alan Arthur by the Republicans in 1884, which allowed in Grover Cleveland). On that occasion, the Republicans replaced Arthur because he had been an unimpressive President after he succeeded James Garfield when he was assassinated. His only previous public office had been Collector of Customs of the Port of News York. He had been selected as Vice President because he belonged to the opposite faction of the party to Garfield, and because he was from New York.
Trump and Imran are both at an age where they should plan their legacy. But while Imran has nothing to wait for, Trump hits the end of the road when he leaves office in 2029. To what, to whom, does he leave his MAGA legacy? That, more than his more obstreperous behaviour, is the real question, for his second term. That the US will probably go to pot is almost secondary
Harris was a better Vice-President, having been first attorney-general of California and US Senator from there. She was picked because she was a woman and a black. Just to round things off, her mother was Indian.
Her policy towards Pakistan would probably have been a continuation of the Biden Administration, though Pakistan might have experienced some of the anti-Pakistan indoctrination she probably imbibed from her father, P.V. Gopalan, who joined the Imperial Secretariat Service under the British Raj, which became the Central Secretariat Service at Independence. True, her father was from Chennai, and thus probably not as virulently anti-Pakistan as Northerners, but still the ethos of the time was very polarized. Also, the Indian diaspora in the USA is strongly influenced by the BJP. Harris could thus have been expected to believe the worst of Pakistan, and put the worst possible construction on any report she received.
Not that Trump is much better, on the evidence of his first term. The only thing different between Biden and him was that the former snubbed PTI chief Imran Khan, while the latter lionized him. Trump is a very public friend of Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, and Imran is supposed to have a soft spot for Israel. Trump also has a relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, which is expected to lead to a resolution of the Ukraine crisis. The resolution will be on Putin’s terms, for all Trump has to do is pull out the plug from aid to Ukraine. Imran too has a soft spot for Russia. Another thing he has in common with Trump is woman trouble. Their misogyny may be the reason why the two men got on well when they met. `At that time, though, they had not faced any trials, Now, though, both have been convicted on charges involving women, whether (in Trump’s case) using campaign funds for reimbursing a lawyer for paying off a stripper, or (in Imran’s case) marrying a divorcee before her iddat was over.
Trump and Imran are both at n age where they should plan their legacy. But while Imran has nothing to wait for, Trump hits the end of the road when he leaves office in 2029. To what, to whom, does he leave his MAGA legacy? That, more than his more obstreperous behaviour, is the real question, for his second term. That the US will probably go to pot is almost secondary.
