SUMMARY
With a Biden-Trump showdown in the 5 November presidential elections more than likely, the consequences of the Jewish-Palestinian conflict in Gaza could be decisive. The final electoral battle will be fought in the so-called swing states. Or will they stay at home, depriving the Democrats of a handful of votes that will prove decisive?
José Antonio Gurpegui
A few days ago I took part in a meeting organised by the Spain-US Council Foundation with one of the heads of the US think tank Atlantic Council. Although the content of his speech and debate focused on Ibero-America and trade relations, the presidential elections – how could it be otherwise – were also analysed. Jason Marczak, the leading researcher, said that the race is going to be so close that his organisation is working on alternative scenarios depending on which of the contenders wins. He assumed that we would once again be faced with a situation identical to that of four years ago with Biden and Trump, Trump and Biden, as contenders.
Indeed, everything seems to indicate that Donald Trump will finally be the Republican candidate. His recent victory in South Carolina, where the contender Nikki Haley was “playing at home”, accumulating a lead of almost 100 delegates (119/22) seems definitive even before Super Tuesday on 5 March – 874 of the 2429 delegates at stake – no matter how much the former UN ambassador trumpets her determination to go ahead.
On Democratic lines, all indications are that Biden will also be the candidate. The Kennedy family’s free verse, Robert F. Jr., withdrew on 9 October, saying he would run as an independent, and the excessively radical by American standards Marianne Williamson, with a meagre 3% in the first polls, have fallen by the wayside. Remaining in the race is Minnesota Congressman Dean Phillips, imploringly seeking his first representative, which does not bode well for the future.
The margin for surprise is getting slimmer, infinitely slimmer, but with the kind of players we have in the race, even their presence on the final ticket cannot be 100% certain. Let’s assume that there will be no more upsets in the nominations and everything will go according to plan. The reasons why we will see this unique Groundhog Day 4 years apart have to do with the motivations of each party in nominating their candidate.
Trump’s influence on Republicanism is as disturbing as it is unprecedented. Neither the loss of the presidency; nor the sorry spectacle of his supporters storming Congress; nor the financial, sexual, or political scandals; nor the mid-term election disaster in which he barely managed to control the House of Representatives while losing the Senate; nor his court appearances and convictions… discourage his unconditional followers. I use the adjective stalwart in its literal sense because according to a survey 78% of these stalwarts have more faith in his claims than in those of their pastor or close relative. On the other side of the scale are the 35% of Republicans who will not support him with their votes, or the dissatisfaction he has created within the party with clashes such as the one that recently ended Kevin McCarthy’s presidency at the head of the House of Representatives in favour of his Trumpist colleague Mike Johnson. Haley’s assertion that she is the only Republican capable of beating the current president – in other words, that Trump is the only Republican Biden can beat – is not crazy.
That is precisely what the Democrats must have considered when they assumed that Donald Trump would be the Republican candidate. If their candidate Biden had managed to defeat him by taking the Republican presidency, what would prevent him from revalidating a new victory with the record of inanities of the last four years. The reasoning, it cannot be denied, has its logic… except that the president’s deterioration between 2020 and 2024 is more than remarkable. His automaton-like appearance and continuous slips – let’s be politically correct – cast doubt on his physical and mental capacity to carry out such a delicate job. This was evident in the poisoned candy of the acquittal for misappropriating classified documents during his vice-presidency.
In any other election, these considerations could well prove decisive. There is no reason to suspect that they would be so in this uniquely atypical election. What could be decisive, however, are the consequences of the Jewish-Palestinian conflict in Gaza. Let me explain.
The final and decisive battle will be fought in the so-called “swing states” – those that may well fall on either the Democratic or Republican side – such as Ohio, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, to name the most important. With an electoral system in which the winner is the sum of all electoral votes, a small difference of just a few thousand ballots, as happened in Georgia, can turn a state Democratic blue or Republican red. Political parties carefully study the different segments of the population. Thus, for example, it is known that Catholic and Jewish votes have more to do with age, state and gender; Evangelicals mostly choose Republican candidates and especially Trump; and Muslims, not very numerous in percentage terms, vote Democrat.
The question arises here: what will Muslims in these “Swing States” vote for? Biden’s remarks decrying the state of Israel are more rhetorical than effective in terms of pandering to his more radical wing. The US will certainly not take any effective action against its great ally in the East and will continue, however reluctantly, to defend Israel, stockpile its weapons arsenal, and obstruct any UN action. I doubt that Muslim voters will change the direction of their vote, but they may well decide to stay home on 5 November, depriving the Democrats of a handful of votes that will prove decisive. There is still time until the autumn, but nothing can be ruled out. It may not be memory lapses or the physical condition of those who take care of themselves with hot broth by the brazier, but a war with a foreseeable end, fought thousands of kilometres away, where the victory of candidate Donald Trump could be forged.
JOSÉ ANTONIO GURPEGUI
Director of the Franklin Institute
Director of the Instituto Franklin-UAH and Professor of American Studies in the Department of Modern Philology at the University of Alcalá. He holds a PhD in English Philology from the Universidad Complutense and a PhD in Law from the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, both in Madrid. He was a Visiting Scholar at Harvard University between 1994 and 1996, and a member of the Matthiessen Room at the same university. He was director of the Instituto Franklin-UAH between 2003 and 2013.
He is president of HispaUSA (Association for the Study of the Hispanic Population in the United States), honorary rector of UNADE (Universidad Americana de Europa), and member of the Editorial Advisory Board of the “Recovery Project” of the Hispanic Literary Heritage in the United States at the University of Houston. He has published and edited some thirty books and is the author of the novels Dejar de recordar no puedo (Huerga y Fierro, 2018), Ninguna mujer llorará por mí (Ediciones B, 2021) and Tiempo de sangres (Universo de Letras, 2023).
