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President Joe Biden addresses the nation about his decision to step back from the 2024 presidential race on July 24, 2024.
Civil Wars and Civil Exits
For a moment last night, America lived up to its best ideals. It often does in the dark hours.
President Joe Biden addressed the nation from the Oval Office to explain his reluctant decision to step away from the 2024 campaign — a campaign he was forced to accept, in a humiliating but necessary way, that he could not win — in a rare moment of sacrifice over ego, service over ambition.
Though age has severely diminished Biden’s capacities, it has not diminished his dignity or character.
Character is not something we talk about a lot in politics these days. But as Biden raspily and haltingly defended his presidential record, his vision for the future, and his 50 years of service, he showed genuine character.
Character is more than just toughness, grit, and fortitude amid a fight, though surely it can encompass those qualities. Character is more than just grace in loss, and Biden knows more about that than most, having lost his wife Neilia and his 1-year-old daughter Naomi to a car accident in 1972, and then his son Beau to brain cancer in 2015. Character is what happens after those moments. It’s what you do with the time left, how you reassemble the pieces and build something with purpose. It’s reflected in the ideas you hold and the people you serve, even if those ideas fail and people turn on you. Character is the story your life tells when you might no longer have the strength to tell it yourself.
“Nearly all men can withstand adversity,” President Abraham Lincoln once said, “but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” You don’t have to agree with what Biden fought for, you don’t have to like his record, and you don’t have to support his party, but last night, President Joseph R. Biden, who still has more power than anyone on earth, passed the character test. And he asked a riven country to try to do the same.
Now let’s turn to the campaign, which, as ever, is a testing ground of character.
Campaign rallies are not known for their subtle rhetoric, so when a local politician is trying to juggle the twin duties of whipping up a partisan crowd while simultaneously kissing their candidate’s butt, it’s usually not surprising they get a little sloppy.
But it’s worth paying attention to what Ohio Sen. George Lang said to a crowd as he introduced former President Donald Trump and JD Vance the other day. Arriving at the podium chanting Trump’s now-famous epizeuxis “fight, fight, fight,” Lang warned of an upcoming civil war if Democrats win the election. “I believe wholeheartedly Donald Trump and Butler County’s JD Vance are the last chance to save our country politically,” Lang said, sweating with enthusiasm in the summer sun. “I’m afraid if we lose this one, it’s going to take a civil war to save the country.” And then, he added a little boost for those prepping for battle. “If we come down to a civil war, I’m glad we got people like Bikers for Trump on our side.”
No one followed Lang on stage and pushed back or suggested it was horrendously dangerous rhetoric. It wasn’t until much later when the recklessness of the comments began to circulate more widely that Lang was forced to apologize.
“Remarks I made earlier today at a rally in Middletown do not accurately reflect my view,” Lang said, as if somehow his mouth had gone rogue from his brain. “I regret the divisive remarks I made in the excitement of the moment on stage. Especially in light of the assassination attempt on President Trump last week, we should all be mindful of what is said at political events, myself included."
Amen to that.
Still, fears of a second civil war permeate the campaign, and while I don’t normally hyperventilate over these hypothetical, partisan-stoked fears because the institutions in the US have mostly proven to be resilient, the horrific assassination attempt on Trump and the events of Jan. 6, 2021, have made the descent in political violence a genuine scenario that demands attention. Stable democracies, like bankruptcy, end in two ways: gradually, and then suddenly.
People in the US are getting used to this sort of rhetoric by now — though normalizing it is one of the most dangerous signs of decline — but people outside the US, especially in the country’s closest allies, are deeply apprehensive. Is the US really inching toward a civil war?
To find out, we partnered on a poll with David Coletto, CEO and chair of Abacus Data, and the results are unsettling. Thirty-nine percent of Canadians say it is likely that the United States will descend into civil war, while another 23% believe it is somewhat likely. 39%? Yes. The numbers are starker among young people, with 48% of people between the ages of 18 and 29 saying a civil war is likely.
“Canadians are watching the increasing polarization and political violence in the US, and many of them are not shutting the door to that division escalating into full-scale civil war,” Coletto says. “Younger Canadians, in particular, are inclined to think that the very worst outcome is at least a possibility.”
While the polling figures are accurate, let’s hope the sentiments are wrong.
Abacus also asked about mandatory retirement ages for politicians in the wake of Biden’s agonizing decision to step aside and, again, most Canadians heartily agree that he is too old to lead. Seventy-three percent believe there should be a maximum age for a president or prime minister. What age? 28% say 71-plus while 48% say somewhere between 61 and 70, which is surprising.
“The whole Joe Biden saga put into clear perspective the effect aging can have on leaders charged with the most important executive functions in the world,” Coletto says. “Most Canadians think political leaders have a best-before date, and the average age of a president or prime minister is around the usual age of retirement, which is 65.”
You can see the full poll results and Coletto’s comments about it here. GZERO will continue to work with Abacus Data, a well-respected Canadian polling firm, to explore how Canadians and Americans feel about their relationship, the US election, and more in the coming 100 days. Check out their work here.
Harris breathes new life into Democratic Party. Could someone do the same for Canada’s Liberals?
When President Joe Biden announced on Sunday that he would not seek reelection, his decision, albeit a little late, was quickly applauded by Democrats as a service to his country — and party.
In the higher-minded rhetoric, Biden was cast as a modern Cincinnatus, putting duty above personal interest. Perhaps the writing was already on the wall, with Biden unlikely to resist the growing calls for him to step aside. But the immediate effects of his decision are the same either way: Vice President Kamala Harris is now the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, an energetic change candidate, and the party has enjoyed an immediate reenergizing.
After Biden dropped out, the Dems raised an astonishing $150 million from big donors, as well as $81 million from small donors in a record-breaking 24 hours. As many joked on X, Harris outgrossed “Twisters” in her opening weekend. Of note, much of the money came from smaller individual donations of $200 or less — 888,000 of them, in fact.
The Harris campaign immediately rallied tens of thousands of volunteers, hitting 28,000 by Monday, many in battleground states. Scripps News reports that’s 100 times greater than the campaign average. A Zoom call with Black women who support Harris drew 44,000 participants — a staggering number that exceeded the company’s limit of 1,000 people and required it to move the group to a webinar.
The energy boost Democrats are enjoying may have Canadian Liberals wondering if a similar outcome might be possible for them. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau insists he’s staying on as leader, readying to fight in the fall 2025 election despite being roughly 20 points behind Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre. By the time the vote rolls around, Trudeau will have been in power for a decade.
Trudeau has been asked to step down by a few notable sources within his party, but the pressure to leave hasn’t risen to the level Biden faced. That could be because the election is still more than a year away, or because Poilievre doesn’t present the existential threat to democracy and rights that Dems say Trump poses. Liberals may also think that for all their misfortune, they could still turn things around and that Trudeau is their best bet for doing so. But things don’t look great.
Election projection site 338 Canada’s Philippe Fournier projects the Conservatives will win 212 seats compared to 74 for the Liberals. That’s based on a popular vote projection of 42% for Poilievre’s side compared to 24% for Trudeau’s, a spread that reflects federal polls that routinely find the Conservatives ahead by 14 to 20 points or more. Trudeau’s approval rating, meanwhile, has sunk to all-time lows.
The Conservatives are leading their rivals in fundraising by a lot. In the first three months of 2024, the party brought in just under CA$11 million from 51,000 donors, which was triple what the Liberals managed and more than all opposing federal parties combined. Political donations in Canada are a fraction of what they are in the US, but the Conservative numbers are high for the country. In 2023, Poilievre broke records with roughly 200,000 donors pledging over $35 million. The Liberals managed $15.6 million.
As bad as things look for the Liberals, however, there doesn’t seem to be much hope that anyone else could turn the Liberal campaign around like Harris looks poised to do in the US.
“There’s pretty good data to suggest that when incumbents are replaced by a successor [in Canada,]” says Graeme Thompson, a senior analyst with Eurasia Group, “the successor has much lower chances of reelection than the original incumbent, especially when that original incumbent’s poll ratings are below a certain threshold where they’re doing pretty poorly.”
Perhaps the most infamous example was in 1993, after Progressive Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney stepped down amid plunging poll numbers and was replaced by Kim Campbell. The PCs lost that election to the Liberals, dropping from 156 seats to two.
The United Kingdom’s recent election is further evidence of the phenomenon. The unpopular Conservatives dropped to 121 seats from 365, losing control of the government to an ascendant Labour Party after roughly 14 years in power — and after cycling through five prime ministers.
Thompson says it’s unlikely there’s anyone in the Liberal Party who could replace Trudeau and turn the ship around. Those within Trudeau’s Cabinet are tied to his government and record, painted with the same brush. And those outside the party would face their own challenges, including time.
“Somebody would have to come in and distance themselves from the government here up to this point," he says, "and embrace a set of policies and a style which would have to be very different.”
“I don’t think that just putting a new coat of paint on the same sort of decrepit structure is going to change the fundamentals. You would really have to be a new government, and that’s going to be very hard for somebody who has been a member of that government up to this point who doesn’t have a long runway to prepare that pivot or transition.”
Thompson also points out that for external candidates, like former Bank of Canada and Bank of England Governor Mark Carney — with whom sources say Trudeau recently met in a bid to get him to join his government — there are few if any incentives to hop on a sinking ship. Moreover, no replacement candidate of Harris’ caliber seems ready, willing, and able to serve.
The numbers bear out that analysis. A recent Nanos poll found that while 19% of respondents chose Carney as the most appealing Liberal leader, followed by Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland at 19%, and Trudeau himself at 9%, a quarter chose “None of the above” and another 20% chose “unsure.”
Harris may be able to continue to inject life into the Democratic Party. She may have a real shot at turning the Democrats' campaign around. But she still has to prove she can stand up to Trump on the national stage.
It doesn’t seem that anyone can — or wants to — do the same for the Liberals, which means Trudeau looks likely to stick around, go down with the ship, and leave the reinvigoration and rebuilding to a successor, who’ll find themselves not on the government side but in the opposition seats.
Biden steps aside
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi, everybody. Ian Bremmer here and a Quick Take on the back of a staggering announcement that President Biden is no longer standing for reelection. No one thought that President Biden should have stood for reelection after he won the first time. Certainly, nobody believed that he was going to be able to serve a full four years of a second term.
That was becoming increasingly obvious to Biden himself, because he saw what rank and file members of the Democratic Party were saying, how they were pulling. The internal polls that the White House has been getting over the last 48 hours were devastating for Biden, not just a loss, but a landslide that would have led to the Democrats getting wiped out in the House and Senate as well, would probably lead to the Republicans ending the filibuster. Biden ultimately a lot later than a lot of people wanted, but nonetheless ultimately standing down, standing aside, strongly endorsing Kamala Harris, his vice president, for the presidential nomination, and to defeat Trump come November. It is certainly a very long way to go. People were saying it's late. We have 107 days to go left in this election.
That's an eternity in US politics. It is longer than most elections in democracy actually occur for the entire campaign. And so, I mean, if you look at that, look at just how much might happen in a race where Trump and Biden have been historically both very unpopular, both seem to be far too old and unfit to serve as president for another term. Biden, the last numbers we saw in that were 74% of American voters saying that he was unfit to serve for another four years because of his age and increasing frailty. 49% of Americans said that about Trump. Now it's worse for Biden. But if Biden wasn't in the race, for Trump, that would be the worst that we'd ever seen.
And of course, now Biden isn't in the race and Trump is, which means that his age, his frailty, his incoherence when he makes statements, that is suddenly a big issue. It is immediately his largest vulnerability, even after the extraordinary ability of Trump to stand up and put his fist in the air and say, “fight, fight, fight” after an assassination attempt, a huge thing, but suddenly yet another piece of unprecedented history in the US.
This one in favor of the Democrats. I'd like to say this is a good day in US politics in the sense that it shows a level of selflessness from President Biden that he was unwilling ultimately, to put himself personally and his ego ahead of that of the country, and he recognized that this was going to be a disaster. No one had the ability to force him. They pressured him. They embarrassed him. They showed him facts. But ultimately, if Biden decided that he wasn't going to go, no one could have forced him. And of course, that's exactly the case for Trump as well. And, you know, you'll remember that after the 2020 election, when everyone in the Republican Party was saying, “you got to stop this, you got to stand down.” That's absolutely not what Trump was prepared to do. He puts himself above the party, above the country, and has done so consistently. I mean, you know, if you think about, the vice presidents in these cases, the 45th President Trump, threatened the life of his vice president in a last ditch effort to hold on to power, back on January 6th in 2021. The 46th president ended his campaign and strongly endorsed his vice president for the good of the country.
It would be hard to see a more dramatic contrast between two old white men in political power in the United States, one, America’s Nero, holding on for himself no matter what the consequences. The other, America’s Cincinnatus. They are not the same. And as a consequence, the US now has a much more competitive political race. I do believe that over the next month, the Democrats will not just dominate headlines, and they've done that a lot with Biden's unfitness, but also have energy and enthusiasm, and that they have not have and they haven't had for a very long time.
That is certainly an advantage for them. I think that Kamala Harris will do much better if the election nomination process is at least somewhat competitive. Now, I personally don't think that Gavin Newsom and Gretchen Whitmer, who are, you know, seen to be the most well-known and competitive candidates, potential candidates outside of Kamala Harris. I don't think they'll run, with Biden now having endorsed, fully endorsed his vice president, with Kamala wanting that endorsement, I think that they will wait, they’ll bide their time. They will support Harris, and they'll wait themselves until 2028. But I do think that others will decide to declare, I don't know who they'll be, but I think there will be some. And I think it's interesting that former President Obama did not endorse Harris. He said very strongly positive things about Biden. But he said that the process needs to be open and play out.
And I think that that is not just a knife to Harris. Not at all. I think it is a Obama recognition, that for all of her advantages, she has vulnerability and she will benefit from a process that doesn't look like the political machine has just decided that they're going to anoint her, that there's not going to be a primary process. So there needs to at least be some level of competition, a race that she has to show that she can win. And, you know, conceivably she could implode during that process. And then maybe she isn't the nominee, though I would bet a lot at this point that she is going to be. Where do we go from here?
We're in unprecedented times. As much as this is a better day for US democracy and there haven't been many, it is also true that this is a democracy that remains in crisis. We were less than a second, a fraction of a second away from former President Trump getting killed, getting assassinated, and if that had happened, I have no doubt that we would have had George Floyd-style riots across the country, but with a lot more guns. And I think that there is a lack of appreciation of just how close this country was to a level of political chaos, social instability and violence. And we have three more months plus before this election, where both the Democrats and the Republicans still believe that if the opponent wins, that it is going to be the destruction of democracy.
Biden's standing down did not change Trump's view of that or his supporters view of that. And the Democrats still feel the same way about Trump, and they feel the same way about Trump, even after his near assassination. There's been no unifying of the country on the back of that, and there'll be no unifying of the country on the back of Biden stepping down. But there may well be a lot more unifying of the Democrats, with perhaps a significant number of independents that show up. So very divided, deeply vulnerable over the coming months, we're going to be very busy. But it's nice on a Sunday to have something nice to say.
And I will certainly say that to President Biden, someone that I have criticized a fair amount over the past months, as he has deteriorated for not, doing the right thing in standing down, that you sir have my appreciation. as an American and more importantly, as a citizen of this little planet here, for doing something that the world can take a little bit of inspiration from, and thinking of someone beyond yourself for your legacy, which looks better today than it did yesterday. That's it for me.
And I'll talk to you all real soon.
President Joe Biden walks on the South Lawn of the White House upon his return to Washington, DC from Delaware on July 25, 2021.
Biden drops out of 2024 presidential race
President Joe Biden on Sunday announced he is standing down and will no longer seek reelection in 2024.
Biden, 81, made the extraordinary decision following weeks of speculation over concerns about his age and capacity to do the job following his disastrous debate performance in late June.
“It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your President. And while it has been my intention to seek reelection, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term,” Biden said in a statement.
“I will speak to the nation later this week in more detail about my decision,” Biden added.
Shortly after he announced that he was quitting the race, Biden endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris.
“My very first decision as the party nominee in 2020 was to pick Kamala Harris as my Vice President. And it’s been the best decision I’ve made. Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year. Democrats — it’s time to come together and beat Trump. Let’s do this,” Biden said.
The president’s decision to step back reflects deep divisions among Democrats and came after a number of Democratic lawmakers urged Biden to drop out, both publicly and privately. Despite being heavily critical of Biden on issues such as the war in Gaza, progressives like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stood by him as centrist Democrats like Rep. Nancy Pelosi pushed Biden to quit the race.
It’s unclear precisely who the Democratic presidential nominee will be now, though Biden's endorsement of Harris makes her the frontrunner.
By dropping out, Biden opened the door for the Democratic Party to gather behind another candidate and for the delegates pledged to him to vote as they want. But if Democrats do not coalesce behind a particular candidate before the convention in August, it could pave the way for an open convention in which prospective nominees would vie for support from delegates. This would be messy and hasn’t happened since 1968.
A lot is now up in the air, and this is a risky gamble for the Democratic Party as it fights to prevent former President Donald Trump from winning a second term – particularly as he seems to be gaining momentum following the assassination attempt a little over a week ago.A police officer stands guard as preparations for the Republican National Convention are underway in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S., July 14, 2024.
Will Project 2025 become Trump’s 2.0 playbook?
As the Republican National Convention kicks off today, there are three big things to watch: how the party responds to the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, who the former president picks as his running mate, and the GOP’s platform for his potential second term.
If you’re curious about his potential VP pick, GZERO has broken down all of the top contenders in our Veepstakes series. As for his platform, the prominent conservative think tank Heritage Foundation has some ideas. Having shaped policies of Republican administrations since the Reagan administration, the Heritage Foundation has crafted a 900-page policy plan called Project 2025.
What is it? On its surface, Project 2025 is a transition plan so the right can hit the ground running in the case of a Trump 2.0. “Project 2025 is not a road map to what Trump will do, but rather a menu of what the far right would like to see him do,” says Eurasia Group’s US director Clayton Allen.
But John McEntee – once a Trump White House adviser – has said he was working to integrate Project 2025 with the Trump campaign. “There will need to be coordination and the president and his team will announce an official transition this summer, and we’re going to integrate a lot of our work with them.”
Among a multitude of recommendations, it proposes making it easier to fire federal workers and replace them with loyal appointees, criminalizing pornography, eliminating the Department of Education, ending diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, restricting access to abortion pills, and limiting climate protections.
It gives legal rationale to erase the Justice Department’s independence from the president, saying that it requires a “top to bottom” overhaul and that the Trump administration should “conduct an immediate, comprehensive review of all major active FBI investigations and activities and terminate any that are unlawful or contrary to the national interest.”
It also proposes the removal of any and all “immigration violators,” ending no-fault divorce, and ending diversity, equity and inclusion programs and the “toxic normalization of transgenderism.”
So, will these and other Project 2025 policies be part of Trump’s plan if he returns to the White House? For now, Trump says “no” and has tried to distance himself from the plan, saying “I know nothing about Project 2025,” on Truth Social. “Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”
Many on the left accused Trump of lying, but the former president may purposely be steering clear of policy matters while campaigning. “Putting out specific policy proposals when you are the opposition candidate does little more than give your opponent specific points to attack you,” says Allen. “Trump wants the election to be a referendum on Biden, not his own policy ideas.”
The project has been a godsend for the Biden campaign, giving it fodder to support its main campaign messages that Trump is a threat to the norms of democracy, abortion access, and extremely far-right on social issues. The Democratic National Committee is launching billboards in 10 cities in battleground states linking former President Trump to Project 2025, and Biden’s campaign is seeking influencers to raise the alarm on social media. It is a welcome distraction from the headline-dominating calls for Biden to step down but also spreads the unrealistic fear that everything in the 900-page proposal will come to fruition.
But Project 2025 may be more of a paper tiger. “[It] was crafted by a group taking a maximalist rather than a realist approach to agenda setting,” Allen says, noting that it’s more likely to motivate the Democratic base than anything else.
That’s not to say that Project 2025 won’t have a strong influence on Trump, should he return to the Oval Office. The first day of the RNC is jam-packed with the Heritage Foundation presenting its agenda, and many of Project 2025’s main crafters are Trump allies who are likely to have powerful, policy-shaping roles in his administration.
Where does Trump overlap with Project 2025? Trump’s official policy proposal and campaign rhetoric show that the former president agrees with some, but not all, of Project 2025. Trump has frequently questioned the legitimacy of the Justice Department. In his first term, he made it easier to fire federal career senior executives and replace them with loyalists, and he has made no secret of his plans to conduct a massive crackdown on immigration.
But Project 2025’s aggressive restrictions on abortion are unlikely to jive with Trump, who, despite appointing the justices who overturned Roe v. Wade, sees abortion restrictions as a matter for invididual states to determine. That being said, campaign rhetoric can vary drastically from the policy that is implemented once in office.
“Policies on immigration and economic policies are the areas with the most widespread backing within the party and therefore the most likely to influence a second Trump administration,” says Allen. But “social policy programs are more of a wishlist and lack support from many members – and in some cases Trump himself.”
Democrat candidate, U.S. President Joe Biden, points during a presidential debate with Republican candidate, former U.S. President Donald Trump, in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S., June 27, 2024.
Did Biden blow it in the debate?
Americans anxiously watched the first presidential debate last night, hoping their preferred candidate could prove they have what it takes to (once again) call the White House home. But they got a particularly disappointing show from President Joe Biden, unchecked falsehoods from former President Donald Trump, and two old guys attacking each other’s golf games.
“Biden did not have a good night,” says Eurasia Group’s US director Jon Lieber. “He was sleepy, his voice was raspy, and he made several obvious and notable verbal gaffes.” While Trump was his normal blustery self, “Biden failed to land a single punch,” even when pointing out Trump’s biggest vulnerabilities.
Abortion should have been Biden’s strongest issue after Trump-appointed Supreme Court justices overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 – which helped Democrats in the midterms later that year. But Biden stumbled in his answer and failed to take remaining time in other questions or in his closing statement to hold his opponent accountable for the increased restrictions on reproductive health.
On other hot-button issues like the economy, immigration, and foreign policy, “Biden’s command of the facts was stronger than that of Trump,” according to GZERO and Eurasia Group’s founder Ian Bremmer, “but no one is looking at the transcript. They're looking at the performance, and his performance was abysmal.”
Will Biden withdraw? Publicly, Democratic officials continue to largely rally around Biden and argue that a lackluster performance doesn’t determine the election. California Gov. Gavin Newsom said after the debate that his party “could not be more wholly unified behind Biden” and that the president should not step aside.
But privately, party insiders report that the whispers about Biden being too old have crescendoed. “Democrats are going to be freaking out for weeks now,” says Lieber. “Expect the speculation about replacing Biden at the top of the ticket to grow to a fever pitch loud enough that Biden will surely hear it – and consider it – in the Oval Office.”
But the decision to withdraw would have to come from Biden himself. Party rules make it almost impossible to replace a nominee without their consent because doing so would amount to party insiders overturning the results of primaries in which Democratic voters overwhelmingly nominated Biden. He won almost 99% of all delegates.
If Biden were to step down, the Democrats would be cast into a brokered convention, or a free-for-all scenario at the Aug. 19 convention in Chicago, where the individual candidates who threw their hat in the ring would have to campaign to try to win a majority of the 700 superdelegates. Historically, brokered conventions aren’t unprecedented, but it’s been 72 years since the last one. Since then, both parties have changed the rules for candidates to avoid this situation, primarily because a nominee in a brokered convention rarely goes on to win the general election.
Trump’s answers were littered with falsehoods, including that the Charlottesville rally of white supremacists never occurred (it did) and an accusation that Biden is a “Manchurian candidate” who is “paid by China” – a nod to accusations that Biden’s unduly influenced by China, for which there is no evidence – but the former president spoke clearly and was easier to understand. Biden, meanwhile, largely failed to hammer Trump on his recent felony convictions or his attempt to overturn the election – besides accusing Trump of having “the morals of an alley cat.”
The country, Bremmer contends, deserves better from its presidential candidates. “A country as strong as America,” he says, “should be able to run a much more effective campaign with people that we admire.”
For more analysis of the debate, check on Ian Bremmer’s QuickTake here.
The hunt for the killer clip
Happy debate night as we all hunker down for the face-to-face rematch in Atlanta of the Age vs. Rage election, now just hours away.
More than anything else tonight at the presidential debate, Joe Biden and Donald Trump will be hunting for the one viral video clip that will define their opponent and frame the campaign. For the first time in close to four years, they will share a stage, and millions of people across blue and red states will finally exit their bias-affirming bubbles and tune in collectively to a single program. Just that fact alone — that it’s a moment when tens of millions of people across the hyper-fractured country gather for a common, shared political reality — makes tonight critical.
The three big factors: Age, Rage, and what happens on Stage. Make no mistake, policies and issues are critical and should be the main course tonight. Immigration, inflation, taxes, foreign affairs, abortion stance, and those pesky 34 felonies … all those matter and will be the focus of the moderators' agenda, according to CNN. But since the 1960 Nixon-Kennedy faceoff through today’s hyper-accelerated, viral social media culture, the impact of presidential debates has moved from policy to personality, from ideas to image. It is all about “the clip.”
There are different kinds of clips.
The Stumble Clip: Biden is much more vulnerable here because the consensus narrative around him is that, at 81, he’s simply too old for the job. One verbal trip, a name mix-up, a fumble, or one inopportune freeze will have exponentially outsized impact. The worst stumble clip might well be when former Texas Gov. Rick Perry ran for the Republican nomination in 2011 and famously forgot which government agency he promised to cut. “It is three agencies of government that are gone when I get there," he thundered on live TV. “Commerce, education, and … umm … uh, the, uh … what’s the third one there … let’s see …” He started to fumble desperately and, pressed to name the agency by the moderator, he checked his notes for a lifeline. Only there was nothing there. Perry’s blank space went viral long before Taylor Swift’s, and he finally petered out, mumbling the politically radioactive word: “Oops.” It was over. Biden cannot have a Perry moment.
Even at his best, Biden speaks in a slow, raspy drawl, like the sludge-filled tributaries of the Lackawanna River, which cuts through his hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania. Between awkward pauses, Biden often punctuates his words with sock-hop-era words like “malarkey,” which adds sepia tones to his already vintage vibe struggling to find a place in a hi-def world.
Trump will try to interrupt, even if they mute his mic, to throw Biden off, while attacking the president on the border, the Middle East, and inflation. So, more than anything else, Biden needs to look and sound alert, quick on his feet, on top of the details, and strong.
Though Trump also stumbles, makes multiple factual errors, and gets names wrong, that’s long been baked into his personality. What’s another 34 untruths or 34 stumbles next to his 34 felonies? None of it sticks. The age-related stumble is not Trump’s worry. He has to watch out for another trap: The Chaos Clip.
The Chaos Clip: Trump is the great conductor of political chaos, culminating in the Jan. 6 attack on the US Capitol. Even fellow Republicans thought that was the end of Trump. It wasn’t. Trump has not only recovered, he’s transformed the Jan. 6 mob into heroes and hostages, a stunning rebranding exercise and one that takes center stage at his rallies. Still, if Trump coughs up a clip about not respecting the election results, lashes out at the justice system to repudiate his 34 felony charges, says he will pull out of NATO, or threatens to drop a nuke on Iran or otherwise destabilize the world order, it could undermine his campaign.
Too much chaos fueled by his bottomless pool of rage and resentment would be deeply damaging. Biden will try to bait him here, and I wonder if he gets so bold as to call Trump a “felon” to his face. Still, Trump loves the stage, doesn’t rely on notes, and if he looks strong, overpowering, and avoids the chaos, it is all upside for him.
The Killer Clip: From Ronald Regan’s famed 1980 zinger, “There you go again” aimed at Jimmy Carter – which 44 years ago seemed nasty and today would barely register – to the 1988 uppercut Lloyd Bentsen landed in the vice presidential debate, telling Dan Quayle “Senator, You are no Jack Kennedy,” this is the sought-after, white whale of political debates. Biden came close in the last debate with his “Will you shut up man,” showing he could punch off the ropes. He will need that again – look for it on Trump’s convictions, abortion, and foreign policy. But no one delivers nastier or more quotable quips than Trump. If he senses Biden is stumbling, he could deliver a killer clip from which Biden might not recover.
So as they hunt for the clip of the night – and as their staff prep as much for the post-debate social media moments as the debate itself – Biden needs to overcome age, Trump needs to contain rage, and both need to avoid a big gaffe on stage.
Can’t wait for 9 p.m. EDT.
We have lots of coverage of the debate for you. Ian Bremmer will be watching, and we will get a video of his insights into a Quick Take video tonight right after the debate, so check our site and social platforms for that. On Friday at 7 a.m., look for GZERO Daily, which will be filled with analysis. At 10 a.m. EDT Friday, I’ll be hosting a live X space with our team and special guests to go over the hits, misses, and the impact of the debate. Join in and it will get spicy.
John Lieber will also have his take on what’s next in our US election video series on Friday. And, oh yes, please play along with our debate bingo, which is a great way to engage with things tonight.
History has its eyes on US
In the run-up to the 2020 election, Europe was preoccupied with the future of the transatlantic relationship. In London, almost every conversation among think tanks, civil society, and diplomatic circles eventually came around to the so-called special relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom, just then wrestling with its Brexit bet.
There was plenty of hand-wringing about whether Donald Trump would be reelected in 2020. The frequently heard view across the pond was that Europeans could forgive Americans for electing Trump for the first time in 2016 – for they knew not what they did. But to return him to office, without the guise of plausible deniability, would mean something else entirely.
Europe would have been put on notice that US voters had accepted the “America First” embrace. The US was going home, and Europe might need to go it alone.
As we find ourselves in the (re)run-up to another Trump-Biden election season, all eyes are again on US voters and the choice they have set before themselves in November. Tariffs and trade policy are up for grabs, the energy and regulatory environment face “sliding doors,” and diplomatic and multilateral engagement find themselves on differential courses – on display last week at the annual G7 Summit where Biden sought in his final pre-election summit to keep the wartime band together with new US measures to intensify pressure on Russia and a transatlantic pledge to leverage Russia’s immobilized assets for Ukraine funding.
It is all too clear that geopolitics is at stake this fall.
What if the 2020 election vantage point from abroad got it wrong?
What if, despite the US rethinking its global role, we are still in the age of US primacy after all? Over the past four years, the US may have unwittingly made this case.
During the pandemic, US pharmaceutical firms – in concert with global researchers – delivered groundbreaking vaccines to save lives. Across the security sphere, the US has led its European partners on a renaissance of NATO, charting the course on both the sanctions to constrain Russia and the military expenditures to bolster Ukraine. Earlier this spring, when further US funding came into doubt, Ukraine and Europe faced a protracted scare. Elsewhere in the Middle East, the US has demonstrated that without any boots on the ground and with untiring diplomatic efforts bearing only partial fruit, it remains a pivotal player in any room. Iran’s attack on Israel on April 13, which saw nearly all of its 300-plus missiles shot down by a US-led coalition supporting Israel, is prime evidence.
And despite years of hard- versus soft-landing debates, the United States remains the world’s largest economy. In recent years, the Biden administration has been busy trying a new industrial policy on for size, a model now being replicated elsewhere. Meanwhile, the US Federal Reserve has set the global template and pace on fiscal policy.
The US dollar remains dominant, even as Russia and others that face a widening web of US-led sanctions and tools of economic security have continued to study currency alternatives. According to the Fed’s latest available data (2022), the US dollar represents 58% of global official foreign exchange reserves compared with the next best Euro at 21%. The dollar was involved in roughly 88% of global foreign exchange transactions in April 2022, a figure that has been stable for 20 years.
According to polling conducted across Europe, Canada, and the United States in 2023 by the German Marshall Fund in its Transatlantic Trends series, 64% of respondents viewed the US as the most influential actor in global affairs (including 62% of Europeans). Lest we overlook it, the same polling found that only 14% viewed China as the most influential global actor.
Looking across the ocean, the view from Europe looks significantly less lonesome than it did on the cusp of 2020. This might be because Trump did not win in 2020, or it might be that the US is more structurally entrenched in the global system than domestic partisan politics suggests. Will a Biden 2.0 mean the status quo on transatlantic support for Ukraine? Would a Trump 2.0 see the administration drive Russia and Ukraine to the negotiating table and pursue a deal that leaves Europe out in the cold? Will Trump’s transactional foreign policy present a sharp test for Europe with more bilateral relationships than multilateral engagement?
Either way, November’s election and its aftermath will begin to answer these questions.
Lindsay Newman is the practice head of Global Macro, Geopolitics for Eurasia Group and is based in London. She writes the Views on America column for GZERO.