The first replay of the US presidential election in over 70 years began on Tuesday as both President Joe Biden and Former President Donald Trump secured their party’ nominations.
As the results of the Georgia primary race started to pour in, Biden exceeded the threshold of 1,968 delegates required to secure the nomination, according to Edison Research. Mississippi, Washington state, the Northern Mariana Islands, and Democratic expatriates were also reporting results.
A few hours later, while four states had elections—including Georgia, the battleground where Trump is charged with a crime for his attempts to void the state’s 2020 election results—Trump secured the 1,215 delegates needed to win the Republican presidential nomination. On Tuesday, 161 delegates from Georgia, Hawaii, Mississippi, and Washington state were up for grabs.
After securing the Democratic nomination, Joe Biden, 81, released a statement criticizing what he saw as Trump’s “campaign of resentment, revenge, and retribution that threatens the very idea of America.”
“Voters now have an option regarding our nation’s future. Will we resist and protect our democracy, or will we allow others to destroy it? “Will we allow radicals to take away our freedoms and reclaim our right to choose?” he asked.
After Trump’s dominating performance last week on Super Tuesday, when he won 14 of the 15 state races, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley withdrew from the race for the Republican nomination, thereby ensuring the outcome of Tuesday’s ballot.
In a social media video, Trump said that there was no time for celebration and that defeating Biden—whom he referred to as the “worst” president in American history—should be the main priority.
“We have a drill planned, sweetheart. We intend to seal off our frontiers. We are going to take on challenges that no one has ever faced before. And we’ll establish the greatest economy in the history of the globe in our country,” declared Trump.
While liberal activists angry about Biden’s backing of Israel’s war in Gaza have persuaded a sizeable proportion of Democrats to vote “uncommitted” in protest, Biden faced little opposition during the Democratic primary.
Both men have already focused on the main election scheduled for November 5 and held opposing rallies in Georgia on Saturday.
In Rome, Georgia, the 77-year-old Trump restated his baseless allegation that the 2020 election was rigged and claimed that Fulton County Attorney Fani Willis was pursuing legal action against him for political motives. He also criticized Biden for not doing more to stop the migration at the southern border of the United States, a point he plans to emphasize during the campaign, just as he did in 2020.
With the announcement that Biden will travel multiple battleground states while investing $30 million in advertisements, the Biden campaign entered a more aggressive phase on Friday.
With the announcement that Biden will travel multiple battleground states while investing $30 million in advertisements, the Biden campaign entered a more aggressive phase on Friday. Ten million dollars were raised in the 24 hours following Biden’s State of the Union address, according to the campaign, giving Democrats a greater financial advantage over Republicans.
The final rematch of presidential contests occurred in 1956, when Republican President Dwight Eisenhower triumphed against Democratic former governor of Illinois Adlai Stevenson twice.
Both Biden and Trump are unpopular with the majority of voters, according to Reuters/Ipsos public surveys, indicating that voters this year are not particularly eager for a rerun of the contentious 2020 race.
Trump may suffer from his numerous criminal charges—he is accused of 91 felonies in four different indictments—among suburban and educated voters, whose support he has always found difficult to win.
On March 25, in New York, he will make history as the first former US president to go on trial for a criminal case. He is accused of fabricating financial records to cover up payments of hush money to a porn star.
It is generally believed that the federal indictment in Washington, D.C., which accuses him of trying to rig the 2020 election, is the most severe case against him. But since the U.S. Supreme Court decided to consider Trump’s claim of presidential immunity, the case has been put on hold, and it’s not certain if a trial can happen before Election Day.
The majority of Americans’ belief that Biden is too elderly to serve a second four-year term has plagued him, but supporters think his vehement State of the Union speech may dispel that belief.
Biden’s other vulnerability is the continuous problem at the border between the United States and Mexico, where a surge of migrants has overburdened the system. After the former president pushed House Republicans to veto a bipartisan border security package that would have increased enforcement, he has attempted to place the responsibility on Trump.
As usual, the economy will be a major campaign theme.
Under Biden’s leadership, the economy has grown, the rate of inflation has decreased, and stock prices have reached record highs. However, surveys reveal that following the outbreak, Americans are irate about the rising cost of necessities like food and hesitant to give the president credit.
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