Daily Times

Generally speaking, the US presidential race is an event of great political extravaganza both domestically and internationally. A political race for the US presidency via the two- party system is waged between the Republicans’ and the Democrats’ nominee. The Democrats are the liberal political party and their candidate is Joe Biden, who has had the record of running for president twice before The Republicans are the conservative political party whose representative in this election is the 45th US President, Donald Trump. So far, there have been 19 Republican and 13 Democratic presidents in US history. The pre-polls indicators show declining confidence in the GOP; while rising American support for the Democrats.Democratic supporters who fervently espouse Joe Biden think he could win between 375 to 422 Electoral Votes.

Not surprisingly, more than 22 million US voters have cast their ballots already in the US presidential election, that corresponds to 16 percent of all the votes that were cast in 2016, the Associated Press news agency news agency said. Currently viewing, with US voters deeply polarized and the world facing a mounting array of shared threats, the presidential election on November 3 is arguably the most globally consequential ever. As the White House enters the home stretch of the 2020 presidential election campaign, and with neither party’s nominating convention featuring much discussion of foreign policy, the contest– between President Donald Trump and Joe Biden– seems largely waged on the battleground of domestic issues.With less than a few weeks until Election Day, Joe Biden seems to have his lead over Donald Trump in the presidential race.

According to the Pew Research, today, 52% of registered voters say that if the election were held today, they would cast their vote for Biden; a smaller share of registered voters say they would cast their ballot for Trump (42%). Jo Jorgensen captures 4% of registered voters while Howie Hawkins garners 1% support.ThoughPresident Donald Trump continues to be White Christians’ preferred candidate for the November election, support among voters in three major traditions – White Catholics, White Protestants who are not evangelical and even White evangelical Protestants – yet the rating has slipped since August this year.

It may be that those Americans who voted for Trump before and won’t this time stand so because they perceive his behaviour as infringing norms of international law weakens America’s global image

So far, polls in the battleground states look good for Joe Biden– leading over Trump. The polls suggest that the Democratic nominee Biden has big leads in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – three industrial states where his Republican rival won by margins of less than 1% to clinch victory in 2016. Trump’s winning margin in Iowa, Ohio and Texas was between 8-10% back then but it’s looking much closer in all three at the moment. It is why some political analysts prognosticate his chances of re-election as low as things stand.

With Republicans having long since neglected their oaths of office, democratic norms seem to be replaced with laws. The seeming presumption that Republicans are better than Democrats at economic stewardship is but a longstanding myth that needs to be demystified. In the 1997 book, Political Cycles and the Macroeconomy, the authors have strongly argued that Democratic administrations tend to preside over faster growth, lower unemployment, and stronger stock markets than Republican presidents do. And most obviously, a Biden administration would be unlikely to foster radical economic policies as he might be surrounded by progressive advisers. Moreover, Biden’s vice-presidential pick, US Senator Kamala Harris of California, is a proven moderate, andmost of the would-be- Democratic senators are more centrist than the left- wing of their party.

Against this backdrop, yes, a Biden administration might raise marginal tax rates on corporations and the top 1% of households, which Trump and congressional Republicans cut merely to give wealthy donors and corporations a $1.5 trillion handout. And yet, in a zoomed picture, former German foreign minister Sigmar Gabriel fears that Trump’s re-election”would endanger both America and the world”, while a prolonged US political crisis– triggered by a disputed result– would be a global disaster. Eric Posner of the University of Chicago, therefore, warns against writing Trump off on the basis of current opinion polls and urges Biden to make the president’s demagoguery a theme of his campaign. To many voters, Donald Trump is not only the most improbable but also a confounding president America has ever produced– as he has plunged the country into deep turmoil.

Moreover, many reasonable Americans think that Donald Trumperoded American democracy almost beyond repair. Trump’s most alarming attribute is that as president he observes no boundaries as social, civic, moral, and legal norms are worthless and meaningless to him. He spends a great deal of time alone with his cell phone and his television, letting his id do the tweeting. His aides and allies are often taken aback by what spews forth.Simply put, Trump’s orientations– after 233 years– do sound like the US institutional structure is no longer robust enough. The GOP has utterly failed in chartering its responsibility to check a dangerous and erratic executive as he openly wages war on the US constitutional order and the electoral process. And yet examining Trump’s current remarks– as usual, empty rhetoric-no, this amounts to a direct attack upon the American democratic process of voting.

Needless to say, Trump’s unfounded and sadist attacks on the 2020 presidential electoral process as unfair and rigged against him, and on mail-in voting as inherently fraudulent and invalid have created uncertainty about the election’s outcome.Furthermore, in the White House press room, President Trump recently refused to acknowledge acceptance of a peaceful transition of power in case he loses and denied to call for restraint on violence if that occurs.

As the Gallup poll also points out, when it comes to the personal qualities a president should have, more of those surveyed believed Biden embodies them than believe Trump does. It may be that those Americans who voted for Trump before and won’t this time stand so because they perceive his behaviour as infringing norms of international law weakens America’s global image. Trump’s promotion of White racism in America is another cause of his inescapable failure.

According to the RealClearPolitics aggregate average, Trump is behind Joe Biden nationally by nearly 10 points and trailing in a number of battleground states, including Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Wisconsin and, crucially, even Florida. If Joe Biden wins on November 3, it would be for any number of reasons, including Trump’s handling of the pandemic and the failure of the administration to come up with an alternative to Obamacare.Virtually seen,on the low end, Biden surpasses the dominance of his predecessor Barack Obama in 2008; while on the high end, Biden seems to deliver a landslide defeat that Americans haven’t seen in over 30 years. In this backdrop, Democrats, Independents, and traditional Republicans including all those Americans with pragmatic optimism– need to ensure the fact– this election is an absolute blowout victory for Joe Biden.

The writer is an independent ‘IR’ researcher and international law analyst based in Pakistan