THE U.S. PRESIDENCY MAY BE PLAYED OUT IN THE GAZA STRIP​

Shortly before writing these lines, I participated in a meeting organized by the Spain-US Council Foundation with one of the heads of the US think tank Atlantic Council. Although the content of his intervention and debate was centered on Ibero-America and trade relations, the presidential elections -could it be otherwise? Jason Marczak, the leading researcher, stated that the race is going to be so close that his organization is working on alternative scenarios depending on which of the contenders wins. He assumed that we will again face 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. Such an assessment may even be a reality at the time of reading these lines if the South Carolina predictions – in which Trump dominates his only challenger Nikki Haley by two to one: 63.5/33.5 – are substantiated. In such a case, his former ambassador to the UN could well withdraw from the race without even waiting for the super Tuesday of March 5 – 874 of the 2,429 delegates at stake -, no matter how much he proclaims to the four winds his determination to go ahead.

On the Democratic lines, everything indicates that Biden will also be the candidate. The free verse of the Kennedy family, Robert F. Jr., who withdrew on October 9, assuring that he would run as an independent, and the excessively radical by American standards, Marianne Williamson, with a meager 3% in the first elections, have fallen by the wayside. Still in the race is Minnesota Congressman Dean Phillips, imploring to get his first representative, which does not represent a promising future.

In any case, there is still room for surprise, admittedly narrow -infinitely narrow- but, with the type of players we have in the race, even their presence in 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 ourselves in this singular groundhog day with 4 years of interval have to do with the motivations of each of the parties to designate their candidate.

Trump’s influence on Republicanism is as disturbing as it is unprecedented. Neither the loss of the Presidency; nor the lamentable spectacle of his followers storming Congress; nor the financial, sexual or political scandals; nor the disaster of the mid-term elections in which he barely managed to control the House of Representatives, losing the Senate; nor his judicial appearances and convictions discourage his unconditional followers. I use the adjective ‘unconditional’ in its literal sense, since according to a survey 78% of these unconditional followers have more faith in his statements 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 confrontations such as the one that recently ended the presidency of Kevin McCarthy at the head of the House of Representatives to the benefit of his Trumpist co-religionist Mike Johnson. Haley’s assertions that she is the only Republican capable of defeating the current president are 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 while the Republican was in office, what would prevent him from revalidating a new victory with his record of inanities in the last four years? The reasoning, it cannot be denied, has its logic if we except that the deterioration of the president between 2020 and 2024 is more than remarkable. His automaton-like appearance and continuous slips -let’s be politically correct- make us doubt his physical and mental capacity to carry out such a delicate job. This was evident in the poisoned candy of the acquittal sentence for appropriating classified documents during his vice-presidency.

In any other election, these considerations could well be decisive. There is no reason to suspect that they would be so in these singularly atypical elections. What could be decisive are the consequences derived from 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 the Democratic or Republican side- such as Ohio, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, or Wisconsin, to mention the most important ones. With an electoral system in which the winner is the sum of all electoral votes, a small difference of only 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, that evangelists choose mostly Republican candidates and especially Trump, and that Muslims, not very numerous in percentage terms, vote Democrat.

The question arises here: what will the Muslims in the swing states vote for? Biden’s statements censuring the state of Israel are more rhetoric to please his more radical wing than actual action. The United States will certainly not take any effective action against its great ally in the East and, however reluctantly, will continue to defend Israel and obstruct any action from the UN. I doubt that Muslim voters will change the direction of their vote, but they may well decide to stay home on November 5, depriving the Democrats of a handful of votes that will prove to be definitive. There is still time until the fall, but nothing can be ruled out. It may not be memory lapses or a physical condition more appropriate for hot broths by the brazier, but a war with a foreseen end fought thousands of miles away, where the victory of candidate Donald Trump will be forged.

————

José Antonio Gurpegui is Director of the Franklin-UAH Institute and Professor of American Studies in the Department of Modern Philology at the Universidad de Alcalá.

This article was originally published in The Diplomat in Spain, with whose permission we reproduce it here.