Voters may yearn for younger options, but it’s the same old fighters slugging it out in the election ring

He has promised to be “a dictator” – his word – on his first day although what that means is unclear. Early on, he expressed an appetite for retribution against political opponents. Later, he said it means drilling for more oil and securing the border with Mexico. So, who knows? He wants a return to American isolationism, new tariffs on goods from China, a reduction in support for Ukraine, pardons for people convicted of storming the Capitol in 2021 and the appointment of a loyalist attorney general to dismiss federal lawsuits against him.

There is also wide speculation he would consolidate power in the executive branch and sack thousands from the federal workforce, whom he regards as disloyal. Picking up from when he left, he’s expected to repeal the popular Obamacare national health care programme, use federal troops for domestic needs (currently illegal), initiate new policies weighted against minority groups and accelerate the us-vs-them rhetoric that has helped turn America against itself.

Between the lines, he is also playing to Republican fears that generational white Christian values are fading against progressivism, diversity and a perceived onslaught of non-whites taking over the country. Evangelicals view him as sent by God to save America. (You read that right). Many Republican voters say they would vote for him even with a guilty verdict.

In Trump’s victory speeches after Iowa and New Hampshire, he painted a gloomy picture of America as reason enough to make him the indispensable next president: “If we don’t win,” he said in New Hampshire, “I think our country is finished”.

All of which has his detractors, foreign and domestic, cringing. Biden has turned his campaign thrust from promoting an improving economy to attacking Trump for what he portends.

For both Trump and Biden, wildcards lurk. Trump faces the possibility that any verdict against him could scare away some of his devotees and would certainly dispatch fence-sitting independents. Some charges could be decided by the US Supreme Court, among them Trump’s assertion that a sitting president is immune from any prosecution, including actions that he concedes “cross the line”. An appeals court unanimously ruled against him in a case involving his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Trump’s lawyers have challenged every accusation in the hope that no case resolves before the election. If he wins, his attorney general would be able to dismiss all the federal charges.

For Biden, the issue of his age exploded after a Justice department prosecutor declined to charge him for “willfully” retaining official documents after his vice presidency, part because the prosecutor found him “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” Further, the Republican-controlled House is trying to impeach him over accusations he was corrupted through the business dealings of his once drug-addicted son, Hunter. His manifest support for Israel in the war with Hamas has alienated traditional Democrat constituencies of progressives, young voters, Blacks, Hispanics and Arab-Americans. Flagging US support for Ukraine in Congress is raising questions about his foreign policy muscle, and he’s still getting dinged for the messy withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, when thirteen US soldiers died.

Recent polls show either candidate could win by a slim margin. Trump is potentially aided by as many as 20 per cent of voters who favour Robert F. Kennedy Jr, an independent candidate who’s the son of a US attorney general and the nephew of a president. Ostensibly a Democrat like the rest of his family, RFK Jr at 70 would appear a younger option for voters who worry that Biden’s age, mumbling speech and sluggish movements would impede his effectiveness in a second term. On the other hand, RFK Jr’s openness to conspiracy theories, including a belief that the gunman convicted of assassinating his father in 1968 is innocent, has many voters baffled.

Haley is running until she isn’t, which means all eyes are on Trump and Biden, in what is the last campaign for each of them. Both are characterising the election as a do-or-die moment for American democracy. Biden maintains that Trump’s disregard for the Constitution and contempt for the rule of law threaten the 248-year-old American experiment. Trump, as he often does when attacked, has turned the same argument against Biden.

Never before have presidential frontrunners solidified their positions so early. That means we’ve got another eight months of attack ads, taunts and hyperbole – and voters already numbed to it all. Given the choice, more than a few would probably choose “neither of the above” on their ballots. Or stay home.

We’ve got another seven months of attack ads, taunts and hyperbole – and voters already numbed to it all

A new playing field

Steve Garvey was a terrific baseball player for the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres. Handsome, telegenic and always a fan favourite, he was voted to the All-Star Game ten times in eighteen seasons. After retiring in 1987, he built a career as a sports marketing executive.

Now 74, he is running for the US Senate seat vacated by the death last year of Dianne Feinstein, who first took office in 1992. Garvey is betting he can win over California voters the way he won over fans in his playing days.

It may not be so easy. Garvey is a Republican in a heavily Democrat state, and it’s a rare member of his party who can win a statewide office. The last Republican elected to the Senate was Pete Wilson in 1983. Arnold Schwarzenegger was the last Republican governor, serving from 2003 to 2011.

Garvey’s prospects are, at least, improving despite a middling performance in his first debate with three Democrat members of the US House of Representatives seeking the same seat. Despite speaking in vague generalities and refusing to say whom he supports for president, he ranked second in several recent polls, just behind Rep Adam Schiff (who led the prosecution in the first impeachment of President Donald Trump) and ahead of the other two House Democrats, Katie Porter and Barbara Lee.

Altogether, 27 people are competing in the 5 March primary, with the top two finishers, irrespective of party, advancing to the November general election. By finishing second, Garvey would almost assure victory for the Democrat who finished first.