This Politico article compares and contrasts the three upcoming state leadership elections in the U.S., Britain, and France. (Transnational political comparisons are a flame to cogno moths.) The piece makes the following points:
Rishi Sunak is in the deepest doo-doo. He's a Tory running against the Labour candidate. In America and France there are mainstream liberals running against the hard right. That's a beeg contrast. The Tories have spent, for Britain, the ungodly sum of $635,000 attacking the Labour Party, an ancient, and the majority, party in the country, as a Fifth Column and its leader, Keir Starmer, as a communistic lunatic. That's a fail.
Biden has the most credible case, and recent history and current rhetoric, for an anti-democratic electoral coup d'etat. But, as in France, there is such "disgust" with democracy's fruits that he is having some bit of difficulty getting the strategy to resonate.
Painting France's National Front as a shadowy, fascist Fifth Column, and its leader, Marine Le Pen, as the spearhead, is a tiny bit difficult for Macron as the party and the Le Pens, père et fille, have been contesting for state leadership for two generations now.
In America Trumpie has the fig leaf of mainstream with the Republican Party label, but no one sees this Republican Party as the party of Lincoln, Reagan, or even of Mitt Romney.
Both Sunak and Emmanuel Macron called snap elections, in effect calling voters' bluffs. No snap elections in U.S. Biden has got five months; Macron has got ten days; Sunak has two weeks.
The moods in all three countries are so sour that positive messages haven't worked. The Democrats in the U.S. have spent $100,000,000 touting the president's legitimate, amazing achievements and haven't moved the needle of popular opinion. In all three countries the incumbents' campaigns have gone relentlessly into attack mode.
In America there is the legitimate trans-political age issue with President Biden. There is no such issue in France and Britain.
Those are the points that the article makes. In America a majority of voters have not begun paying attention to the presidential election, this is partly due to revulsion at the choice. There is also Trump fatigue. It's a variant of democracy fatigue. We haven't had three elections in a year, as in Israel for instance, but we have had nine years of Trump. We have had enough and we don't want more. This is not inuring to the president's benefit, however. More people are tired of voting against Trump than voting for him.
To me, the president has been harmed by his mixed messaging. Especially with a disengaged, fatigued electorate the message must be laser focused. Trump's has been. For nine years it has been: immigration, the Big Lies of opponents' corruption, delegitimizing any result in law and politics that does not legitimize him. He became an illegitimate president by deligitimizing the rule of law and democracy. The Big Truth has to be repeated at least as frequently as the Big Lies if it is to be accepted.
The president has also been harmed by his lack of personal presence. Trump is everywhere. His same message everywhere, repeated everywhere, even daily outside the courtroom where he was convicted of 34 felonies, in rallies across Trump Country, and even in Democratic strongholds in New York, New Jersey, and California. He is in France marking D-Day. And makes a bee line to Los Angeles for a private fundraiser. He has held no rallies. He is not in person, with the public, at any political event. Trump would have turned D-Day into a messaging event to American voters. The president's message was statesmanship not partisan domestic politics. That used to work; there is no sign it is working today.
To me, "democracy" is too vague a message to be a winning message. Especially if voters are tired of democracy, as they are. But, all other messages having failed, it's the one the Bidens are going with for the next five months. Maybe it will be a winner in the end but until I see the needle moving toward Biden in the swing states, I am unconvinced. Trump is the favorite, he has always been the favorite, and I think Trump will win in five months.