Why 'Sleepy' Joe Biden will knock out Donald Trump

Or how about a few months ago while on the Democratic presidential nomination campaign trail when Biden lashed out at a car worker in Detroit telling him he was “full of shit”.

To be fair to Biden, in the first instance he was referencing the audio tape that surfaced in 2016 in which Trump was heard making lewd comments about women, which the now US president dismissed as “locker-room talk”.

In the left corner stands the challenger, “Crazy Joe” Biden. In the right corner, the New York business tycoon “Tiny Hands” Trump.

And in the second Biden was responding to an equally gobby pro-gun advocate who frankly appeared lucky enough not to have the ageing Senator attempt to beat the same said “shit” out of him.

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I mention these two rather colourful encounters in light of the fact that barring unforeseen circumstances, Joe Biden will represent the Democratic Party in squaring off against President Trump this autumn.

Admittedly Biden will not be the official presidential nominee until the party’s nomination convention in August, but his place on the US election ballot was pretty much cemented this week following Democratic rival Bernie Sanders’s decision to end his campaign.

The upshot of all this means of course that even in these contagion-ridden times, a bare-knuckle, no-holds-barred battle for the US presidency the likes of which we have rarely seen before is now on the cards.

In the left corner stands the challenger, old Beltway hand and winner of two vice-presidential titles, “Crazy Joe” Biden. In the right corner, the New York business tycoon without any political or diplomatic experience who brawled his way to the top, “Tiny Hands” Trump.

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But all joking aside, this will not be a pretty match and almost certainly full of political haymakers, headbutts and below-the-belt punching.

Stylistically the two fighters might appear different, but both present themselves as ardent defenders of the working classes, court voters in Middle America and, in their own very different ways, are known for their toe-to-toe plain-speaking.

Given their advanced years – Trump is 72 while Biden is 76 – questions too about their age and records are sure to come to the forefront, with each man approaching the topics with different angles of attack.

The president will be acutely aware too that every time Americans have gone to the polls since he took office, they have pushed back hard against him.

While still more than half a year away from the election showdown, the Trump camp will have been buoyed by a Gallup poll last month that showed his approval ratings rise to 49% – the highest of his presidency – in a signal that more Americans supported his handling of the coronavirus crisis.

Since then however things have changed dramatically, as the number of Covid-19 cases has risen and more Americans face unemployment. In fact another recent FT-Peterson poll the other day revealed that almost three-quarters of US families had lost income due to the pandemic, and Trump’s standing is undoubtedly suffering as a consequence.

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The president will be acutely aware too that every time Americans have gone to the polls since he took office, they have pushed back hard against him.

For Trump it must be an ominous portent that one day last month the Dow Jones stock market index fell below the level it closed at on January 19, 2017, the day before he took office promising to “make America wealthy again”.

These market losses reflect broader anxieties across the US right now, where coronavirus has forced the shutdown of major parts of the economy and made a recession all but inevitable.

The bottom line here is that three factors work against Trump and in Biden’s favour, should the Democratic Senator be astute enough to capitalise on them.

The first is that Trump’s re-election campaign was designed under the premise that the economy would be strong through November when the ballot is scheduled, but that’s not true anymore.

The second is that Trump had been planning to use his brawler’s punch against the “socialism” of Bernie Sanders, but now without such a “communist” in the running this argument has lost its potency. Bernie, as some American newspapers wryly observed, was Donald’s 2020 election campaign dream date.

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Then there is Trump’s campaign pledge of “draining the swamp” of big government. But this was before he had to call on his fellow Americans to trust in big government – his government – to tackle Covid-19 and save the US economy.

For his part Biden will likely make much of these chinks the Trump political armour, but even then still faces a real contest to reach the White House.

I’ll stick my neck out and say Biden will take the title from Trump, uninspiring a political fighter as he is. In the process though, you can be sure there will be no shortage of blood spilt on the canvas

Against him is the fact that the Trump campaign still has deep pockets, giving the president a massive cash advantage. Trump also has the daily attention of the nation and is sure to pull out all the stops in a rally-round-the-flag appeal.

For many Americans too, Biden smacks of a guy who has spent most of his life as an elected official in Washington, a Democratic Party hack who is well past his sell-by date.

Biden also has the difficult task of bringing the Left into his camp and performed poorly during his campaign with younger progressive voters who were drawn to Sanders.

As the author and journalist Matthew Stevenson scathingly pointed out in the online US magazine Counterpunch recently, Biden is a politician “who in a career of stunning, compromised mediocrity has carried the bag for credit card companies … big oil, the right-to-life crowd, profitable prisons, and the Iraq War”.

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But despite these criticisms others say Biden has the perfect opportunity to campaign for a fresh way of conducting American politics and if successful in becoming president, a fresh style of American world diplomacy and leadership. Which brings us to the thorny question of whether the man Trump sometimes derisorily calls “Sleepy Joe” can land the knockout punch on his Republican adversary this November.

As a journalist I’m too long in the tooth and wary of making predictions. Just for the hell of it though, I’ll stick my neck out and say Biden will take the title from Trump, uninspiring a political fighter as he is. In the process though, you can be sure there will be no shortage of blood spilt on the canvas.

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