November rematch looms as Biden and Trump cruise with Super Tuesday wins

US President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump are moving much closer to winning their parties' nominations during the biggest day of the primary campaign.

Super Tuesday elections are being held in 16 US states — from Alaska and California to Vermont and Virginia. Hundreds of delegates are at stake, the biggest haul for either party on any single day.

Biden started off the night by winning Iowa, where Democrats previously held their contest but released results Tuesday. Later, he won Vermont and Virginia primaries too.

While much of the focus is on the presidential race, there are also important down-ballot contests. California voters will choose candidates who will compete to fill the Senate seat long held by Dianne Feinstein.

The governor’s race will take shape in North Carolina, a state that both parties are fiercely contesting ahead of November. And in Los Angeles, a progressive prosecutor is attempting to fend off an intense reelection challenge in a contest that could serve as a barometer of the politics of crime.

The spotlight, however, remains on the 81-year-old Biden and the 77-year-old Trump, who continue to dominate their parties despite both facing questions about their age and neither commanding broad popularity across the general electorate.

The earliest either can become his party’s presumptive nominee is March 12 for Trump and March 19 for Biden.

But in a departure from most previous Super Tuesdays, both nominations are effectively settled, with Biden and Trump both looking ahead to a reprise of the 2020 general election. Trump still faces one major challenger, former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, but has mostly focused on Biden in his rallies and interviews.

"We have to beat Biden — he is the worst president in history," Trump said on Tuesday on "Fox & Friends."

Trump added: "We're going to win every state tonight."

Biden countered with a pair of radio interviews aimed at shoring up his support among Black voters, who helped anchor his 2020 coalition.

"If we lose this election, you’re going to be back with Donald Trump," Biden said to DeDe McGuire a radio host.

Mental acuity for the top job

Despite Biden's and Trump's domination of their parties, polls make it clear that the broader electorate does not want this year’s general election to be identical to the 2020 race.

A new AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll finds a majority of Americans don't think either Biden or Trump has the necessary mental acuity for the job.

"Both of them failed, in my opinion, to unify this country," said Brian Hadley, 66, of Raleigh, North Carolina.

The final days before Tuesday demonstrated the unique nature of this year’s campaign. Rather than barnstorming the states holding primaries, Biden and Trump held rival events last week along the US-Mexico border, each seeking to gain an advantage in the increasingly fraught immigration debate.

Trump recently told a gala for Black conservatives that he believed African Americans empathised with his four criminal indictments.

That drew another rebuke from Democrats around the country for comparing personal legal struggles to the historical injustices Black people have faced in the US.

The former president has nonetheless already vanquished more than a dozen major Republican challengers and now has only Haley left.

She has maintained strong fundraising and notched her first primary victory over the weekend in Washington, DC, a Democrat-run city with few registered Republicans. Trump scoffed that Haley had been "crowned queen of the swamp."

"We can do better than two 80-year-old candidates for president," Haley said at a rally Monday in the Houston suburbs.

Vulnerabilities with influential voter blocs

Trump's victories, however dominating, have shown vulnerabilities with influential voter blocs, especially in college towns like Hanover, New Hampshire, home to Dartmouth College, or Ann Arbor, where the University of Michigan is located, as well as areas with high concentrations of independents. That includes Minnesota, a state Trump did not carry in his otherwise overwhelming Super Tuesday performance in 2016.

Still, Haley winning any Super Tuesday contests would take an upset, and a Trump sweep would only intensify pressure on her to leave the race.

Biden has his own problems, including low approval ratings and polls suggesting that many Americans, even a majority of Democrats, don’t want to see the 81-year-old running again. The president’s easy Michigan primary win last week was spoiled by an “uncommitted” campaign that disapproved of the president’s handling of Israel’s war in Gaza.

Allies of the "uncommitted" vote are pushing similar protest votes elsewhere, including Minnesota. The state has a significant population of Muslims, including in its Somali American community.

In Massachusetts, 29-year-old Aliza Hoover explained her "no preference" vote as a principled opposition to Biden's approach to Israel but said it does not necessarily reflect how she will vote in November.

"I think a vote of no preference right now is a statement to make yourself a single-issue voter, and at the moment the fact that my tax dollars are funding a genocide does make me a single-issue voter," Hoover said.

"I would love to see the next generation move up and take leadership roles,” said Democrat Susan Steele, 71, who voted Tuesday for Biden in Portland, Maine.

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Source: TRT