Before the presidential election in the United States - 185 days. Although the COVID-19 epidemic that struck the country occupies the minds and hearts of Americans more than the political games of the elite, passions around the struggle for the White House continue to glow.
Unlike the last presidential campaign, the rivals decided long before the party congresses and conventions. In 2016, the candidacy of Donald Trump, the unconditional winner of the republican primaries, hung in the balance right up to the vote in Cleveland on July 19 - on the eve of the congress a revolt of "non-trammers" broke out trying to prevent his nomination. And the Democrats weren’t all that troubled: a week before the congress, letters from the National Committee of the Democratic Party surfaced in the network, indicating that the Democrats' establishment deliberately torpedoed Bernie Sanders, who was objectionable to them, which provoked a sharp reaction from the supporters of the Vermont Senator: even during they literally besieged the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia, where they voted on Hillary’s seemingly uncontested candidacy.
As a result, Hillary, of course, received the necessary approval from the congress and was nominated by a candidate from the Oslo Party, but Sanders’ electorate did not support her. The split in the democratic camp in 2016 is still considered one of the factors that ensured Trump's victory. And since Trump's re-election in 2020 is the biggest nightmare of Democrats and liberal progressives, all their forces are now thrown to avoid such a split in the current race.
And I must admit, they do pretty well.
The first sign was the exit of the race "crazy professor" Bernie Sanders, finally turned, thus, into a professional loser of election campaigns. Moreover, if in 2016 he was actually deceived and betrayed by his party comrades, now Bernie has done everything on his own. He came out cunningly - announced that he was suspending (not stopping) his campaign, but his name remained on the lists for primaries in the remaining states. At the same time, a senator from Vermont declared his full support for Biden. The purpose of such a maneuver, as the insightful political observers from Politico wrote, was not only to overcome the split in the Democratic ranks, but also to push Biden to the left - the transition of the youthful, leftist and too radical for the centrists of the Sanders electorate to the sleepy Joe camp (as Trump sarcastically calls Biden) is inevitable had to influence the political agenda of the latter.
It happened on April 13, and the next day Biden was finally supported by the guru and the highest authority for all the progressives of America, Barack Obama. Prior to that, the ex-president had a pause of Mhat’s pause, which created a certain intrigue - there were even rumors that the ex-president, who had settled in his asylum, did not particularly want to support his ex-vice, because he considered him too stupid to defeat Trump. But after Sanders’s demarche, Obama had no choice.
The number of status democrats who supported Biden began to grow like a snowball. On April 27, Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi made a video message stating that Biden is "one of the few who can overcome the coronavirus and get the US out of the crisis." To give her a little convincing words, Pelosi recalled that, as Obama's vice president, Biden “helped pass Obamacare’s health care reform in 2010, and also“ helped draft law on economic recovery after the 2008 crisis. ” Pelosi, of course, did not mention the fact that the US economy at the end of Obama’s term was in a sad state, from which Donald Trump had just pulled it out. (True, Tim Mertow, adviser to the headquarters of the incumbent president, did not fail to remind the Americans: “Joe Biden helped conduct the worst economic recovery since World War II, so his advice in the field of economics is a dubious commodity.”)
And finally, on Tuesday, April 28, Hillary Clinton, the ex-secretary of state and ex-presidential candidate, cast her vote for Joe Biden.
All US politicians, with the exception of Trump, who conducts media briefings in a traditional manner, communicate with voters through video messages. Hillary was no exception. Smiling radiantly at the camera, she called Biden her “friend” and a man who “had been preparing for this moment all his life”. This sounded somewhat ambiguous, because in the same appeal, Hillary, speaking of the coronavirus epidemic, said that "this is the moment we need a leader, a president, such as Joe Biden." So, sleepy Joe has been preparing for his COVID-19 epidemic all his life? However, these are trifles that only an enemy of American democracy can pay attention to!
“I want to add my voice to many who supported you as our president!” - Ex-Secretary of State declared pathetically, which during the 2016 campaign, Trump referred to only as False Hillary. And, turning to the audience already, she fell upon her successful rival: “Think about the difference if we had now a president who not only listened to scientists, preferred facts to fiction, but also united us, demonstrated the compassion and care that we so expect from our president - an example of which Joe Biden has been an example of his whole life. Think about what the difference would be if we had a real president, and not the one who only plays him on TV. ” Hillary completed her speech.
Envy is, of course, bad. It’s humanly clear that Trump Hillary, who lost four years ago, still cannot forgive him for this and that now she wants to believe that the hour of revenge is near. Sleepy Joe, albeit not very similar to the handsome prince, will break out of the shelter in which he is hiding from the coronavirus, and will strike with his sparkling spear the terrible Trump dragon that has settled in the White House. Moreover, recent opinion polls show that the current president’s approval rating, which increased in the second half of March, declined in April and now stands at 44.9 points with 52 points anti-rating (according to RealClearPolitics integrated data).
The fact that Trump's popularity is falling is not surprising. In the USA, the coronavirus continues to rage - the number of people infected by it has already exceeded one million, every new day brings 10,000+ patients. The number of deaths exceeded 60 thousand, and the media is already actively promoting the topic "more Americans died from COVID-19 than during the Vietnam War." Who are the democrats and progressists blaming for this? Of course, the president.
Supporting Biden, Hillary returned to the warpath with Trump, which seemed to be gone forever after a defeat four years ago.
For Biden, though expected, Clinton had long said she would support a Democratic candidate - but still an expensive present. The former Secretary of State continues to enjoy the support of many Democratic voters, especially women. In the 2016 elections, 65 million people voted for her one way or another, and this base is basically still devoted to her. And it is possible that the verified step of the False Hillary is not entirely disinterested - she may very well count on reciprocating courtesy from the side of “friend” Joe.
By chance or not, but immediately after her speech, Biden announced that he would like to see a woman as his vice president.
Opponents of Trump hope that Clinton’s support can help consolidate the Democrats around Biden. Among other things, it’s also a beautiful “Hollywood” story - Biden was seriously planning to compete with Hillary in the 2016 elections, but stepped aside (the official version says that he refused to participate in the race because of the painful death of his son Bo ) and supported Clinton. There are other small details that can touch the hearts of sentimental American housewives: Biden grew up in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and Hillary spent her childhood with her grandparents in childhood. When Biden supported Hillary in 2016, their first joint event was just a visit to the house where Sleepy Joe spent his childhood.
Biden seriously hopes that the support of the ex-secretary of state, behind which there is an influential group, usually called the Clinton clan, as well as the approval of their former boss Obama, will rally voters from various party factions.
However, along with obvious bonuses, Biden's alliance with Clinton carries a number of hidden threats. The strategy that Trump successfully used in 2016 in the fight against False Hillary can now be equally effectively used against Biden.
“You can’t imagine a greater unity of the democratic establishment than the union of Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton,” commented the ex-Secretary of State’s demarche Brad Parskale, campaign manager. - Both of them were weighed down by decades spent in the Washington swamp, and both intended to prevent Bernie Sanders from receiving a nomination from the Democratic Party. President Trump had already smashed her (Hillary) once, and now he will smash her candidate (Biden). ”
Not everyone agrees with this statement. Even very loyal to the president of Fox News published a column of his most liberal columnist Leslie Marshall, "Biden’s endorsement to Clinton - bad news for Trump - Democrats come together to smash him." Marshall believes that the support of the former secretary of state is the last step on the road to democratic unity, which is necessary in order to send Trump to "political resignation." Now Biden secured the support of almost all prominent Democrats - he was supported even by the radical leftist Alexander Okasia-Cortes from the odious "Detachment" in the House of Representatives.
Marshall emphasizes that even if the support of Hillary - the former first lady, ex-senator and ex-secretary of state - does not give Biden a lot of additional votes, she will surely help him raise “the millions of dollars needed to defeat Trump.” And here it is difficult to disagree with her, because the financial capabilities of the Clinton clan and their sponsors (including those who supported Hillary during the 2016 campaign) are really great.
In addition, such a demonstrative step by Clinton gives the Biden campaign, which was expected to stall during quarantine, an additional impetus in the information war with Trump. And he really needs this impulse - against the background of Trump's briefings on TV almost daily, avoiding public speaking because of the fear of contracting the coronavirus, Sleepy Joe risks falling out of the information field.
However, taking help from the ex-secretary of state, Biden also assumes part of her "toxic" past, which Trump PR specialists will surely not fail to take advantage of.
And given the fact that Biden himself has many such sins that he would rather never remember (take at least the story with Tara Reid, who unsuccessfully tries to overcome the conspiracy of silence of the mainstream media!), An alliance with False Hillary may turn out to be for him Trojan horse.
True, it is worth noting that frequent briefings - the very ones that Trump bravely conducts in the old fashioned way, in front of a hall full of lively, not virtual journalists - from a certain point began to harm him. The blame is basically all the same media that grab hold of any clue to harm the president. The story with Trump's arguments about disinfectants is indicative. “Here is a disinfectant ... it kills the virus in a minute. After a minute. Is there a way to do something like this through an injection or a cleaning method? You know that he falls into the lungs, and many bad things happen in the lungs. It would be interesting to know. Have to consult a doctor with this question. But that sounds interesting. ”
After these words of Trump, the mainstream media wrote that he: a) an idiot; b) a dangerous idiot, because people will now begin to swallow disinfectants and give injections of chlorine-containing drugs, and this should never be done. And since Trump also talked about the fact that the virus kills ultraviolet radiation, all the same media began to alarmingly warn Americans about the dangers of excessive exposure to UV rays.
Meanwhile, if we carefully read the transcript of this speech by Trump, then we won’t find anything particularly funny or ridiculous. If only because he said these words, referring to a medical adviser, a professional doctor. And he ended with the question: “You did not consider such possibilities, no?” To which the doctor honestly answered: no, they didn’t consider it.
But the media are not interested in such subtleties. It is important for them to make the president a fool - even for this they have to make all Americans idiots (well, who, in fact, will drink disinfectant fluids, if, of course, it's not whiskey?).
Trump really shouldn’t appear in front of journalists so often. The 45th president of the United States is good at public speaking - but only if they are prepared in advance. Where you need to improvise, quickly find witty answers to unexpected questions, replay your opponent in real time - as a rule, he is lost and does not look the best way. Even during a debate with Hillary Clinton in 2016, Trump, who had spoken brilliantly at campaign meetings before, looked rather pale.
Which, however, did not stop him from finally winning the election.
The author’s point of view may not coincide with the position of the publisher.