The general election is here and it is Trump vs. Biden

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(CNN) — Donald Trump left the White House as a loser.

But now, only one man – President Joe Biden – can thwart the return of his predecessor in what would be the most surprising political comeback in history.

Just three years after Trump slipped out of Washington in disgrace – days after the mob he told to “fight like hell” ransacked the US Capitol – and even as he faces four looming criminal trials, he already achieved a recovery for the ages in the Republican primaries.

Trump went on a roll on Super Tuesday. He won the Republican primaries in Virginia, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Maine, Texas, Arkansas, Alabama, Colorado, Minnesota, Massachusetts and California. Every big state that went for him moved the former president closer and closer to a general election campaign against his 2020 victor, in which polls show he has at least an equal chance of winning.

To adapt the title of one of his books, it is “The Art of Return.”

As the results came in, Biden and Trump attacked each other, setting the stage for what is sure to be a bitter showdown in November that will likely split even deeper national political divisions.

“We are going to win this election because we have no other choice,” Trump said at his Mar-a-Lago resort as he savored his sweetest election night since defeating Hillary Clinton in 2016. He spoke against a backdrop of American flags that He evoked the theatricality of the presidency he hopes to recover.

Trump evoked his only term in the White House as some kind of economic golden age, adding: “If we lose this election, we’re not going to have a country.” That last line was a chilling echo of his scathing speech in Washington on January 6, 2021, before the most brazen attack on democracy in modern American history.

Biden reacted to Trump’s Super Tuesday victories by immediately escalating his general election attack on the former president, previewing an argument that will be at the center of his own campaign for a second term.

As he seeks to paper over his vulnerabilities on issues such as immigration and the economy, Biden warns that Americans face an existential dilemma.

“Tonight’s results leave the American people with a clear choice: Will we continue to move forward or allow Donald Trump to drag us back into the chaos, division and darkness that defined his presidency?” Biden said in a statement.

“If Donald Trump returns to the White House, all of this progress will be at risk. He is driven by grievance and pain, focused on his own revenge and retribution, not the American people. “He is determined to destroy our democracy…and he will do or say anything to come to power.”

Victory after victory for Trump

Officially, the former president still lacks the necessary delegates to be the probable Republican candidate. He will probably surpass the magic number of 1,215 next week.

Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks at a Super Tuesday election night party on Tuesday, March 5, 2024, at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) Evan Vucci/AP

His passage through this year’s primaries has highlighted his absolute dominance of the Republican Party. He has laid bare his imperviousness to the scandals and shame that doom deadly political careers, at least among the activist voters who decide the GOP nomination.

Hundreds of thousands of Republican voters can’t subscribe fast enough to Trump’s “retaliation” votes against his enemies as he paints a dark picture of a nation crippled by crime, overrun by immigrants and sliding toward World War III.

Democrats will enter a rematch with Trump deeply concerned, given Biden’s rock-bottom approval ratings and growing public doubts about whether the oldest president in history is fit to serve a second term that would end when he is 86. Many voters still feel deeply insecure despite a strong economic recovery that has racked up record employment numbers and is outpacing other industrialized states. Still, high food prices and hefty rents are a reminder that many are awaiting the return to the pre-pandemic normality that Biden promised in 2020.

However, amid Trump’s dominance, there was enough data to suggest that he is still beset by some responsibilities that resulted in his ouster from the White House four years ago. His biggest weakness still looms: His character and extremism alienate more moderate suburban voters. The fate of the 2024 election may well depend on whether GOP primary voters who chose Haley in those areas overcome their antipathy and vote for Trump in November. Haley is not expected to endorse Trump on Wednesday, sources familiar with his plans told CNN, and will instead ask the former president to win the support of voters who backed her.

Biden’s campaign has long said that the president’s poll numbers are being devalued by the fact that he is not yet judged as the alternative to Trump. Time for that excuse will quickly run out now that the shape of the 2024 general election is clear.

“Tonight the campaign started,” Biden’s national campaign co-chairman Mitch Landrieu told CNN on Tuesday night. “Until now, people didn’t think it was going to be Biden against Trump, but here we are and ready to go,” he said.

A return for history

Other politicians have seen their careers in tatters and returned triumphant. Richard Nixon lost the 1960 presidential election and then, two years later, the California gubernatorial race. He promised that people would no longer have the opportunity to mistreat him as he approached political retirement. But in 1968 he returned and won the presidency.

Bill Clinton was mired in personal scandals in the 1992 presidential primary, but became the “comeback kid” in New Hampshire on his way to the White House. And Biden consolidated his control of the Democratic nomination four years ago, on Super Tuesday, after a disastrous advance in early state races that he only reversed with a victory over Bernie Sanders in South Carolina several weeks earlier.

But Trump faced headwinds like no other candidate before him. They include two impeachments, 91 criminal charges, four criminal trials, a devastating $450 million pending civil court judgment, and a legacy marked by chaotic leadership in a pandemic. But none of that stopped him from advancing toward the Republican nomination. In fact, his manipulation of accusations against him – including for his attempt to steal the 2020 election – emboldened his supporters when he branded himself a persecuted dissident.

One-term presidents almost always finish after being ousted from the White House. But Trump’s advance toward the Republican nomination means he has a chance to emulate the ultimate comeback in American politics: former President Grover Cleveland’s victory over incumbent President Benjamin Harrison. In 1892, Cleveland became the only commander in chief (so far) to win a second non-consecutive term.

One of the reasons Trump didn’t look like a loser to his supporters was that he convinced rank-and-file Republican voters that he didn’t actually lose the 2020 election. Although he did. Early exit polls Tuesday showed that about 6 in 10 Republican primary voters in North Carolina believe Biden’s victory over Trump four years ago was illegitimate. About half of Republican primary voters in Virginia thought the same, mirroring the sentiments of Trump supporters across the country that show the former president’s unmatched ability to create an alternate reality.

The bond between Trump and his most loyal followers was never broken. Their unconditional affection for their champion was clear from the moment long lines of supporters lined up all day, shaking with their “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) souvenir gifts. , outside of its first events in Iowa and New Hampshire in January.

Trump’s march toward the Republican nomination is all the more surprising given how much his political star has dimmed. His intervention in the 2022 midterm elections was mostly disastrous, as he pressured swing state candidates who joined his electoral denialism, often at the expense of seats his party could have won. . The Democratic control of the Senate and the small Republican majority in the House of Representatives that did not meet the expectations of the red wave were widely attributed to his failed strategy. When people began leaving Trump’s early presidential announcement speech at Mar-a-Lago later that year, it seemed like the former president was a washed-up political force and that 2024 would be a race too far.

The key to Trump’s lasting resurgence may turn out to be an extraordinary moment inside a notorious jail in Atlanta last August. Trump became the first former president to suffer the indignity of providing a mugshot, turning himself in following his fourth criminal indictment.

But inmate number P01135809 was not embarrassed. He used his disgrace as a weapon, claiming that he was being persecuted by the government of his successor to ensure that he could not mount a political comeback. Trump’s fundraising soared. His Republican true believers embraced his narrative of political martyrdom. And Trump’s potential Republican rivals in 2024 soon saw his room for maneuver reduced.

Former Vice President Mike Pence, who refused to help Trump tear up the Constitution on January 6, quickly discovered that there is no place in the modern Republican Party to defend democracy. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis had a theory that what Republican voters wanted after the chaos of the Trump years was the same kind of “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) extremism. acronym in English) minus the chaos. Wrong again. And Haley’s campaign, the last one standing, will be remembered primarily for refuting the long-held conventional wisdom that once the former president went one-on-one with an opponent, anti-Trump forces in the party soon found him. would overwhelm

Trump beat them all. And now he faces Biden.