Crowing about the Trump verdict will only hurt
Biden – populists thrive on claims of persecution
Simon
Jenkins
The more the political establishment damns the
ex-president, the more those outside its reach are drawn to him
Mon 3 Jun
2024 15.40 CEST
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jun/03/donald-trump-guilty-verdict-joe-biden
“Guilty”,
screamed the one-word headline in the New York Times last week, dripping with
undisguised glee. Howls of contempt descended on Donald Trump as he slunk from
his Manhattan courtroom to cries of “felon”. He now awaits sentence and three
more criminal trials, two of them over his response to his 2020 election
defeat.
Ecstasy is
a dangerous substance in politics. Trump’s enemies should be careful what they
wish for. Within 24 hours of his leaving court, $39m reportedly poured into his
campaign coffers. Though some Republicans seemed hesitant, an Ipsos poll for
Reuters showed voting intention tilting in his favour. As with his victory in
2016, the more the political establishment damns him, the more those outside
its reach are drawn to him.
To many
people in the US and around the world, the prospect of Trump’s return is the
reduction to absurdity of the populist surge experienced by many western
democracies. His still narrow lead in several polls has been enough to scare
nervous Republicans to back him. To the House speaker, Mike Johnson, his New
York conviction was “a shameful day in American history … a purely political
exercise.” The same was true of the rightwing media. Rupert Murdoch’s New York
Post replied to the Times’s “Guilty” headline with another single word,
“Injustice”.
To many
jurists, the fact that Trump’s prosecutor, Alvin Bragg, was an elected Democrat
who reportedly vowed to “get Trump” did indeed give the trial a political spin.
This gives the former president a decent chance of victory on appeal next year.
If that followed a “stolen” Biden win, there would be grounds for alarm. As
Trump said at the weekend of his possible house arrest: “I am not sure the
public would stand for it … There’s a breaking point.” The US Capitol attack on
6 January 2021 showed what that meant.
As for
Trump’s next trials, never was “the law’s delay” so clearly justice denied. The
US judicial offices are highly politicised. It was Trump’s packing of the
supreme court when in office that has helped stall any progress against him at
the federal level. It has left him to dismiss local state prosecutors as
political enemies. This in turn has added to his appeal among the “left-behind
Americans” of populist folklore, those ignored by what he calls “the swamp”,
the liberal elites of the nation’s east and west coasts.
This gulf
between “insiders and outsiders”, cities and provinces, cannot be ignored. It
is evident in all western democracies. It underlay the Brexit referendum in
Britain and is seen in support for Trump from Reform’s Nigel Farage and from
Boris Johnson, who called his trial a “machine-gun, mob-style hit job”.
Populists clearly stick together, however outrageous the cause.
This means
that for those who view another Trump presidency as a disaster, handling the
next six months needs caution rather than cheering. Trump’s appeal to his
supporters lies not in his affection for them but in the hatred he expresses
for his enemies. It is why his support has been rising among non-graduates, the
poor, African Americans and even Latinos. Joe Biden’s strength lies rather with
the better educated and the better off. Old divisions between Republican and
Democrat are meaningless in the age of populism.
The answer
cannot be to reason with Trumpism, which is more a stance than a programme. The
television debate with Biden will be mere gladiatorial theatre. The strategy
can only be to lower the temperature, to minimise publicity for Trump’s vapid
accusations and bolster the virtues of Biden’s presidency and his increasingly
uncertain leadership. Elections to the White House reflect the constitution’s
balance of sovereignty between Washington and the states. They are when the
states matter, in particular the dozen or so swing states that regularly change
sides, where the contest is won or lost. As for the outside world, it normally
cares about who becomes the US president. This time it cares about who does
not.
Simon
Jenkins is a Guardian columnist
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