America has never seen anything like the 2024 presidential race.
A former president, Donald Trump, is set for a rematch against the current one, Joe Biden. But Biden’s future at the top of the ticket now is uncertain as he faces calls to step aside from a growing number of congressional Democrats due to his advanced age and a series of faltering public appearances.
Biden’s position as his party’s nominee has grown increasingly tenuous as some Democratic lawmakers and prominent donors began imploring him to yield to a new candidate after a slipshod debate performance against Trump in June raised questions about his mental acuity.
Subsequent TV interviews and public speeches have failed to quell the storm – and it remains possible that Biden, 81, could decide to end his bid for re-election and turn to Vice President Kamala Harris, 59, or someone else within the party to step in.
Trump, 78, survived an assassination attempt on July 13 while speaking at a rally in Pennsylvania. His ear was grazed by a bullet, streaking his face with blood and providing the race with perhaps its most enduring image after he showed his defiance while being moved off-stage by federal agents. The shooter’s motive remains as yet unknown.
In May, Trump became the first ex-president to be convicted of a crime when he was found guilty on 34 felony counts relating to a scheme to cover up an alleged affair with a porn star. He will officially become the Republican nominee at the party’s convention this week.
Trump, who is tentatively due to be sentenced on Sept. 18, has said he would appeal the verdict.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., 70, a scion of the prominent political family, is running as an independent candidate and could play the pivotal role of spoiler, depending on whether he siphons more votes away from Biden or Trump.
Even with Biden’s fitness for the job in question, national opinion polls show him and Trump still locked in a tight race in a head-to-head matchup ahead of the Nov. 5 election, with voters citing the economy, border security, abortion and political extremism as top concerns. Some polls have shown Biden’s prospects damaged by the debate, while others have shown the race remaining even. Both candidates suffer from low approval ratings overall, making turnout a potential issue.
Trump has refused to say he would abide by the election results. He falsely claims that Biden’s victory over him in the 2020 election was fraudulent, and his allies are laying the groundwork for a significant poll-watching effort and potential post-election legal challenges this year.
WHAT IS BIDEN’S MAIN ELECTORAL ARGUMENT?
Biden’s pitch for a second term rests on his stewardship of the economy as it emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic, and what he calls the “battle for the soul of America” – a fight against Trump and aligned Republicans whom Biden labels as extremists.
With Trump atop the Republican ticket, much of Biden’s campaign is focused on warning voters that Trump poses a mortal threat to American democracy, a concern it argues should outweigh any worries about the president’s health.
Democrats accuse Trump of instigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and plotting revenge against those seeking to punish him.
At the same time, the president and his campaign have argued that the economy, which is the top priority for many voters, has rebounded significantly, with unemployment dropping to generational lows, gross domestic product growing faster than expected and wages rising.
However, inflation continues to be a sticking point after peaking in 2022. While the inflation rate has since eased, voters remain concerned about the high price of staples such as food, fuel, cars and housing.
Biden can point to federal investments in infrastructure, clean energy and chip manufacturing that he says will generate long-term job growth.
On foreign policy, Biden is a traditionalist who believes in the U.S. taking a leading role in international affairs to maintain global security.
WHAT IS TRUMP’S MAIN ELECTORAL ARGUMENT?
Trump and his campaign contend that Americans were better off economically during his time in the White House, pointing to inflation and high interest rates under Biden’s watch.
Voters gave the edge to Trump over Biden in terms of which candidate is better for the economy by 41% to 34%, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll in April.
Trump has said he would cut federal spending, which Republicans blame for stoking inflation and triggering consumer-price spikes, trim back federal regulations and lower taxes.
Trump also has said he would revive stricter immigration policies from his time in office to stem the record flow of migrants into the U.S. from Mexico, and would conduct mass deportations.
Thousands of those migrants have been bussed to large cities across the country, taxing public resources. Trump has claimed, without evidence, that the influx has led to a rise in violent crime.
As a rebuttal to Biden’s charge that he is a danger to democracy, Trump has accused the Biden White House of weaponizing the Justice Department in order to prosecute him and prevent him from winning another term. The Justice Department says it acts without political bias.
On foreign policy, Trump embraces what he calls an “America First” agenda that seeks to avoid international entanglements. He has pledged to keep the country out of “forever wars” and claims he could end the Ukraine-Russia conflict within 24 hours.
WHAT ARE TRUMP’S LEGAL TROUBLES?
Following the guilty verdict in New York, Trump still faces indictments in three cases in federal and state courts for his attempts to overturn his 2020 defeat to Biden and his mishandling of classified documents.
The U.S. Supreme Court in July may have handed Trump a lifeline when it held that a president cannot be prosecuted for “official” acts taken during his time in office. How that impacts the remaining three cases against Trump remains to be seen, but the ruling will likely delay all three past the election.
Trump’s sentencing in the hush-money trial was delayed to September following the decision, though Trump’s lawyers have said the verdict should be set aside in light of the presidential immunity ruling.
The guilty verdict in that case may convince some Republicans to drop their support for Trump, though opinions could change with the election still months away.
Biden’s son, Hunter, was found guilty in June on charges of lying about his drug use when purchasing a gun. He became the first child of a sitting president to be convicted of a crime.
The president issued a statement saying he accepted the outcome of the case and would respect the judicial process as Hunter Biden considers an appeal.
WHERE DO BIDEN AND TRUMP STAND ON ABORTION?
Democrats have made abortion rights central to their 2024 campaign, two years after the Supreme Court – powered by a conservative majority that Trump installed – overturned the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision and ruled that abortion was not constitutionally protected.
Opinion polls show most Americans do not favor strict limits on reproductive rights, and Democrats are hoping threats to those rights will encourage millions of women and independents to vote their way this year.
Biden, a Roman Catholic who at times has disagreed with his party’s support for abortion rights, has pledged to sign legislation into law codifying them after the Supreme Court struck down Roe.
The issue has divided Republicans, with Trump saying the matter should be left to individual states and others pushing for a national ban. Trump supports exceptions for rape, incest and to protect the life of the mother.
At the June debate, Trump said he would “not block” access to abortion medication as president despite moves by some Republican-led states to restrict the use of the drugs.
BORDER SECURITY
Since taking office in 2021, Biden has grappled with record numbers of migrants caught illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.
In June, as polls showed border security a top issue for the election, Biden implemented a new series of restrictive security measures that permit the government to quickly deport or turn back migrants who enter the country illegally without allowing them to claim asylum.
The measures bore resemblance to Trump-era border policies, prompting criticism from liberals, who have said they will contest the policies in court.
Trump has vowed to step up border security and oversee the largest deportation effort in U.S. history. In February, he urged congressional Republicans to back away from a bipartisan bill that gave his party many of the border-related measures it sought in order to avoid giving Biden a policy victory.
THE ISRAEL-HAMAS CONFLICT
Biden has been heavily criticized by many Democrats for his steadfast support of Israel in its conflict with Hamas in Gaza, with protests breaking out in cities and on university campuses nationwide.
The Biden administration has called for the Israeli government to temper its assault on Gaza, where more than 38,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to health officials, and has blocked at least one U.S. shipment of weapons to Israel.
Biden told a news conference last week that the Israel-Gaza warmust end and that Israel must not occupy the enclave after the war. He said his ceasefire framework had been agreed on by both Israel and Hamas but there were still gaps to close.
Trump and Republicans also back Israel, and have accused pro-Palestinian protesters of being antisemitic. But Trump has urged Israel to “finish up” the war or risk losing global support. He has not been clear about whether his policy toward Israel would be different from Biden’s.
WHERE DO BIDEN AND TRUMP STAND ON CHINA?
The Biden administration has said it wants to “de-risk” and not “de-couple” its relationship with China and work to keep the competition between the world’s No. 1 and No. 2 economic powers from escalating into conflict. Even so, Biden recently proposed imposing more tariffs on Chinese goods such as steel and aluminum products.
Biden has sworn to protect Taiwan from any Chinese attack.
Trump favors a policy of strategic ambiguity to deliberately create uncertainty about how the U.S. would act if there was a Chinese invasion.
While some Republicans view China as a rising national security threat, Trump largely has characterized the Asian giant as an economic rival and has vowed to impose further tariffs on Chinese imports.
WHERE DO THEY STAND ON UKRAINE?
Biden has been a fierce advocate of providing weapons and other assistance to Ukraine in its war with Russia, while Trump has repeatedly expressed doubts about whether such aid lies in the U.S. national interest.
Trump more recently said, however, that the survival of Ukraine was important to the U.S.
Trump in April declined to lobby against passage of a $95 billion bipartisan aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan spearheaded by Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson even as it was opposed by Trump’s allies in Congress.
In February, Trump made waves when he suggested the U.S. should not defend NATO countries that do not meet their obligations to contribute to their national defense.
European leaders defended Biden despite a number of verbal gaffes made by the president last week during a NATO summit in Washington.
WHAT ARE THE KEY STATES IN THE 2024 ELECTION?
Republicans will formally nominate Trump this week at the party’s convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, while Democrats will hold their convention in Chicago in August.
That both parties are holding their conventions in the Midwest shows the value they are placing on Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, all of which went for Trump in 2016 and flipped to Biden in 2020.
Arizona, Georgia and Nevada are also closely divided and contain growing populations that could determine the next election. Another key battleground could be North Carolina, a Southern state with an increasingly diverse electorate.
(Reuters)