Who is popular today?

DONALD TRUMP’S stranglehold on the US Republican Party is now complete. The lone person who stood between him and the presidential nomination, Nikki Haley, on Wednesday dropped out of the race.
Hours earlier, the writing had been on the wall for Ms Haley. Republican voters had resoundingly chosen her opponent in primaries in California, Virginia, North Carolina, Maine, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Arkansas, Alabama, Colorado and Minnesota.
With Mr Trump’s Super Tuesday coronation, America now becomes that which it was once eager to condemn on the international stage: a threat to democracy.
Should the presumptive Republican nominee go on to lose the November 5 election to Joe Biden, such an outcome will not be the only repeat of history. The shameful insurrection of January 6, 2021, will almost certainly recur.
Should he win, Mr Trump has pledged to become a dictator on day one. He will encourage Russia to invade NATO allies. The Supreme Court, which on Monday kept him on the ballot notwithstanding the argument that an insurrectionist is barred from office, is weighing whether he enjoys absolute immunity.
The justices’ ruling will be moot. Mr Trump already has absolute power within the GOP. He holds no official office, yet no Republican in government is more powerful than he. House speakers fall like dominoes on his say-so. A bipartisan border deal is sabotaged. Frivolous impeachments are launched; government shutdowns leveraged. Mitch McConnell, who is on his way out as Senate Minority Leader, on Wednesday kissed the ring, endorsing Mr Trump.
Mr Biden has been in the Oval Office for three years. Yet in some respects, he has never had a chance.
A social media blackout of Mr Trump after January 6 initially relegated him to the status of a has-been. That all ended with unprecedented criminal indictments and civil proceedings – correctly brought by independent officials sworn to uphold law and order – which returned him to the spotlight and made him a martyr for his dubious cause.
In 2020, 81 million people, the largest number in US history, voted for Mr Biden. But 74 million Americans also stood with Mr Trump. That was more than those who voted for Barack Obama in 2008. And that was notwithstanding everything witnessed during Mr Trump’s years in power.
Today, three in ten Americans believe Mr Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him. And even more seem to have forgiven him for sins far worse than those he committed from 2016-2020.
If the stakes were low for Super Tuesday, given the foregone conclusion that it would be a whitewash for Mr Trump, they could not be any higher for Mr Biden today, as he makes the traditional State of the Union address. It may well be his – and America’s – last.

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