hankyoreh

Former US President Donald Trump speaks to the press after being booked at the Fulton County Jail in Georgia, US, on Aug. 24. (AP/Yonhap)

By John Feffer, author and co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies

Donald Trump faces 91 criminal counts in four felony cases. He is charged with trying to overturn the 2020 election, attempting to interfere in vote-counting in the state of Georgia, mishandling classified documents, and falsifying business records related to paying hush money to someone with whom he conducted an affair.

Donald Trump is also the frontrunner in the Republican Party primaries — by a wide margin. In the first primary, in Iowa in mid-January, Trump currently leads the next most popular candidate, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, by over 20 percentage points in most polls. He leads all other candidates in national polls by more than 30 percentage points.

But perhaps the most mystifying development early in this election season is that Trump is also running neck and neck in the polls against President Joe Biden. In some polls, he is even ahead.

The other enduring mystery of American politics is the low favorability of Biden. The US economy is doing reasonably well. Growth has been steady at around 2 percent per quarter. Inflation has been declining steadily over the last year since peaking last September. The unemployment rate remains below 4 percent.

Most Americans vote their pocketbook, and yet Biden’s approval rating has been stuck at around 40 percent for the last year.

The president hasn’t faced any particular scandals. True, the Republicans have tried to manufacture a scandal around Biden’s son Hunter, who certainly tried to cash in on his family name. But no evidence has emerged of any involvement by the president.

There have also been no horrific foreign policy blunders. The US withdrawal from Afghanistan should have been better managed. But Biden was dealing with parameters established by the Trump administration, and public memory of the debacle is fading. Meanwhile, Biden has mobilized support for Ukraine in its fight against Russian invaders but without committing US troops, which has proven to be a relatively popular approach.

On top of that, Biden has pushed through several important pieces of domestic legislation, including the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, and the CHIPS and Science Act. Through these bills, the administration has marshaled over a trillion dollars to improve US infrastructure, revitalize the economy, and accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels. The size of the investments is impressive. Even more remarkable has been the fact that the administration was able to get the legislation passed over concerted opposition from the Republican Party and members of Biden’s own Democratic Party.

So, why isn’t Biden more popular? And why is he not far ahead in the polls against a twice-impeached, demonstrably incompetent, and serially indicted Donald Trump?

This is not an easy question to answer. Partly, Biden is a victim of his age. Americans were willing to accept a mild-mannered septuagenarian as an antidote to the volatile Trump. But now, three years later, they seem to want someone more vigorous.

But it’s not just about Biden. The discontent that envelops Trump voters is focused on the “system.” Over the last half-century, Americans have been developing an almost visceral disgust for government. This sentiment is not always logical. In the same breath, an American will fulminate against a bloated federal government and then demand more Medicare benefits from that same government.

This animosity dates back to the American Revolution, which overthrew the English “system.” The westward expansion of the United States bred a frontier mentality that placed a great emphasis on adventure, self-reliance, and celebration of the outlaw. Even in the most conventional periods of American life, such as the Eisenhower years of the 1950s, an anarchic spirit flourished among the Beats and the precursors of the 1960s counter-culture.

This almost inbred suspicion of the establishment has produced an impulse to “throw the bums out,” to vote parties out of power on a regular basis. The establishment has done its best to temper this volatility by giving political incumbents sizeable advantages when it comes to fundraising. An astonishing 98 percent of incumbents won reelection to Congress in 2022.

But when it comes to the presidency, voters routinely want to try out radically different flavors: from George W. Bush to Barack Obama to Donald Trump to Joe Biden. And now a sizeable number of voters want to swing back again to Trump.

The billionaire businessman has long cultivated an outlaw identity. He has boasted of his evasions of taxes, his flouting of the “laws” of business, and his intolerance for the rules of politics. As president, he delighted in confounding expectations by meeting North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, threatening to pull the United States out of NATO, and disputing the results of the 2020 presidential elections. It was at this point, as he should have been preparing to leave office, that Trump moved solidly into outlaw territory by breaking a series of federal laws, according to the indictments.

Trump argues that every indictment has actually improved his popularity. His followers, who dominate the Republican Party, believe that the criminal charges are politically motivated, that the former president is the victim of a witch hunt. Trump’s “victimization” confirms their worldview that the “system” is out to get them and their idols.

But the indictments will inevitably cast an ever-larger shadow over Trump’s campaign. The vast majority of independents — and a significant majority of all voters — believe that the former president is guilty of attempting to subvert the 2020 election. Although Trump might get a temporary bump up from the indictments themselves, the trials and possible convictions may well doom his electoral chances. Efforts to remove him from the ballot have intensified in various states.

Biden also faces some challenges aside from his favorability rating. The Republicans still maintain an advantage in the Electoral College that forces Democratic candidates to get 3 percent to 4 percent more of the popular vote to gain the presidency. Biden has seen an inexplicable decline in support from African American and Latino voters. Then there’s the potential that a third-party candidate, like leftist academic Cornel West’s Green Party bid, will siphon off just enough votes from the Democrats to swing the election to Trump. And, of course, the president isn’t getting any younger.

But the election is still many months away. It’s one thing to rally around an outlaw figure. It’s quite another to put a convicted lawbreaker into the White House. Let’s hope that Americans won’t go that far.

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]