According to The Associated Press, President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump secured the necessary delegates for their parties’ presidential nominations on Tuesday, cementing a general election rematch that had been underway in the November months.
Both men and their campaigns have long awaited this moment. As is typical of an incumbent president, Mr. Biden faced only token resistance in the Democratic primary, while Mr. Trump had been his party’s dominant front-runner for months.
Their collision in November became even more likely after Mr. Trump won a decisive victory in Iowa in January. His victory bested all but one of his main Republican rivals and put him on a sliding path to his party’s nomination. His last remaining primary opponent, Nikki Haley, suspended her campaign last week, clearing a path that had already been remarkably free of obstacles for a candidate facing significant legal problems.
The Associated Press named Mr. Biden the presumptive Democratic nominee on Tuesday after projecting his victory in Georgia, while Mr. Trump was named the presumptive Republican nominee after winning the GOP contests in Georgia, Mississippi and Washington state. Mr. Trump later swept the Republican caucuses in Hawaii.
Tuesday’s results paved the way for a 2024 general election campaign that will be one of the longest in modern American history at just under eight months and will be the country’s first presidential rematch in nearly 70 years.
Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden had already shifted their focus from the primaries. With the president facing no significant challengers, Mr. Biden’s campaign speeches emphasized not only his record but also the danger he believes Mr. Trump poses.
In a statement, Mr. Biden said he was honored that Democratic voters “have once again placed their trust in me to lead our party — and our country — at a moment when the threat posed by Trump is greater than ever.”
And as Mr. Trump worked to eliminate his Republican rivals, his campaign speeches focused on criticism of Mr. Biden and the need for the primaries to end quickly so his party could focus its energy and resources on November.
In a video his campaign posted on social media after his nomination, Mr Trump called Tuesday a “great day of victory” but said it was now time to focus on defeating Mr Biden in November. “I want to thank everyone, but more importantly, we must get to work to beat Joe Biden,” he said.
Neither man will be officially selected until his party’s conventions this summer. But Mr. Biden has already used the political and financial apparatus of the Democratic National Committee. And last week, the Trump campaign effectively took over the Republican National Committee and imposed mass layoffs on Monday as it reshapes the way the party operates.
That Mr. Trump managed to secure the Republican nomination relatively quickly shows that he has retained control of the party and its conservative base despite his defeat in 2020 and failed attempts to unseat it; a series of disappointing interim defeats by the candidates he supported; and his 91 offenses in four criminal cases.
The former president won nearly every nominating contest that awarded delegates, with Ms. Haley scoring victories only in Vermont and Washington, D.C., where she became the first woman ever to win a Republican presidential primary or caucus.
But Mr. Trump’s rapid path to the nomination also reflects backroom efforts by him and his political team to change the rules around primaries and delegates in his favor. The rules by which states allocate delegates to particular candidates are set by state party officials, and Mr. Trump and his advisers built relationships with those officials to help him along the way.
In one critical example, Trump’s campaign helped shape California’s rules by leading party officials there to adopt a winner-take-all system that awarded the state’s delegates to a candidate who received 50 percent of the vote statewide . That threshold favored Mr. Trump, the only candidate there at that level.
Mr. Trump finally won the California primary last week, a key moment in the race for delegates. California’s 169 delegates gave him 14 percent of the 1,215 delegates needed to win the nomination.
Likewise, Mr. Biden faced little resistance in his march to the nomination and dominated each contest by a wide margin. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the political scion and environmental lawyer, dropped out of the Democratic nomination contest to run as an independent. Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota and self-help guru Marianne Williamson never received more than a fraction of the vote.
Both men’s strength in their primaries could mask weaknesses in their coalitions that could pose difficulties for them in November, especially given that the 2020 election was decided by narrow majorities in just a few states.
In some places where Mr. Trump convincingly won Republican elections, he still performed relatively weaker among suburban voters and voters who identify as moderates or independents. Such groups, whose support Mr. Trump lost in 2020, could be crucial in closely contested states.
Mr. Biden, for his part, faced a campaign in several primary states that urged voters to protest his handling of Israel’s war in Gaza by voting “non-committal.” A loss of support from these voters in the fall could weaken the coalition that helped Mr. Biden oust Mr. Trump in 2020.
During Mr. Biden’s first term, voters questioned his age and record, even as economic indicators improved. The president has shown weakness toward young people and black and Hispanic voters, key groups in the coalition that helped him win last time.
Mr Biden is viewed negatively by the majority of Americans – a precarious position for a president seeking re-election – although this is also the case for Mr Trump.
Both campaigns have argued that voters who have supported them in past years will return to them as the election crystallizes.
Mr Biden and his allied groups also have a significant financial advantage over Mr Trump, whose proposed legislation is taking a toll.
With Tuesday’s victories, Mr. Trump secured the nomination before any of his four criminal cases went to trial. His Manhattan criminal case, involving a 2016 hush money payment to a porn star, is scheduled to go to trial on March 25 and is expected to last six weeks.
Mr Trump’s lawyers had argued unsuccessfully that the timing would hurt his presidential campaign, citing in part the primary calendar.
Recently, Trump’s legal team made a final attempt to delay the trial before it began. In court papers released on Monday, his lawyers argued that the trial should not take place until the Supreme Court decides whether Mr. Trump will intervene in his Washington criminal case involving allegations that he planned the 2020 election to overturn is immune from prosecution.
The judge in the New York case, Juan M. Merchan, is unlikely to grant the request.
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2024-03-13 09:45:59
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