The Tribune

With Charlie Harper

What a curious year this promises to be in American politics.

The loser in the last presidential election is running away from his few challengers, most of whom so fear offending his ardent supporters that they refrain from criticising him even as he faces nearly 100 criminal charges.

The incumbent president inherited an economic mess and has largely dealt with it, but inspires very little confidence from voters on his management of the economy. But the incumbent also underestimated and misjudged a real crisis at the southern American border and has done little to inspire confidence in his handling of this issue since he took office.

Curiously, the incumbent faces hardly any opposition as he glides – or stumbles – toward virtually certain renomination and likely reelection, polls notwithstanding.

Donald Trump’s command of the contemporary Republican Party is not too difficult to understand. Like successful Republicans of the past 50 years, he is careful never to overestimate the intelligence or engagement of the average American voter.

Most Americans don’t have any idea about the problems their nation faces. They cannot point out Ukraine on a world map, and they don’t care. Such is the complacency, lassitude and ignorance of too many Americans that they are often easily led astray, and Trump is certainly the most accomplished American demagogue of this century, or perhaps of any other century.

In his continuing defiance of American convention, he resonates deeply with the alienated, discounted and discarded millions of Americans who constitute his base of support. For them, Make America Great Again means re-establishment of a white, nativist hegemony that they think might benefit them.

But Trump is also, or at least has fashioned himself into, a reliable conservative. Many of his policies and achievements while he was in office ring the chimes of American conservatives, so it is a mistake to simply brand his support among “establishment” members of the GOP as craven opportunism.

Opportunism remains undoubtedly a factor in their continuing fealty, however. Just this week, Congressional Republican leaders signed up for another Trump run at the White House.

Unless Trump has unforgivably betrayed them or lied to them or otherwise mistreated them, Republican politicians have plenty of reasons to stand with him, or at least behind him as he surges to renomination.

Calculations for Democratic politicians and supporters are less easy to categorize. For every labour union official who celebrates Joe Biden’s continuing ardent support of organized labour in the US, there is a disaffected ideologue who bemoans his half-hearted attempts to render impermeable the US-Mexican border.

For every middle-class suburban housewife who finds gas prices lower and stabilizing when she fills the tank of her minivan, there is another who expresses genuine concern at the visible signs of Biden’s aging. For those in the latter category, there has been little connection established with Vice-President Kamala Harris, who would be the president’s replacement if he were incapacitated.

African-Americans and university students are two constituencies that have good reasons to be pleased with this incumbent president and to want his return to office. But despite Biden’s gifts to each group, they seem poised not to vote for Republicans but to do something they often do and that will be just as bad in November. They may decide not to vote at all.

How has Biden actually done on the economy? Inexplicably for many experts, he has led an almost totally unexpected revival. There was no recession in America in 2023. The stock market has gained over 35 percent in value since Biden took office, and an estimated 60 percent of Americans now have at least an indirect stake in the market, many via participation in large institutional pension plans.

Inflation has withered from 6.4 percent to less than half of that at 3.1 percent. The US economy added 2.5 million jobs.

According to analyses by investment bank JP Morgan, Americans are spending at a significantly greater rate now than they did before the COVID pandemic took hold in 2020. Western Europeans and Japanese, by contrast, have resumed spending only at pre-COVID levels.

This is obviously terrific news for us in The Bahamas, dependent as we remain on the health and vitality of the US economy and on vigorous spending by Americans.

But all this spending occurred even as Americans were moaning to pollsters about the state of the US economy. This baffles many economists.

A widely-quoted University of Michigan economist says “every indicator of public sentiment on the US economy is incredibly positive – except for public opinion polling. So: are all the traditional economic indicators broken, or is polling what is actually broken?”

Given the dismal predictive performance of American public opinion pollsters in the past decade, one might indeed conclude that polling is indeed in need of serious reexamination and reform.

There is a contrary view. According to its advocates, real wage gains in the recent past have been obscured by high inflation only now being reined in by federal monetary policy. For every homeowner whose home value has soared, there is the sobering reality that interest rates remain much too high for many first-time home buyers.

Biden will slog on. Trump will defy the courts. Bizarre business as usual.

FLORIDA FOOTBALL TEAMS KEEPING PLAYOFF HOPES ALIVE

The 18th and last weekend of the NFL’s regular season is here, starting on Saturday. There’s a very good chance that all three Florida teams will be participating in the league’s postseason tournament.

This group is of course led by the 11-5 Dolphins, whose season has been marked by huge wins (70-20 over Denver, 30-0 over the New York Jets and 45-14 over Washington) and big, dispiriting losses (20-48 in Buffalo and 19-56 in Baltimore). Miami has also lost to playoff-bound Kansas City and Philadelphia. The Fins’ biggest win came by two points against Dallas in December.

Miami has been dogged by a reputation for inconsistency this season under 40-year-old head coach Mike McDaniel, whose two-year record with the team is 20-14, including a playoff loss last year. Against weaker defences, the Dolphins can run track meets and score prodigiously. Their win against the Cowboys is significant because that was the first time they had battled against a truly solid defence and prevailed.

They have clinched a playoff spot. But their Sunday home game against the streaking Buffalo Bills will determine their position. If they win, Miami will secure the second seed in the American Conference playoffs and would likely face either Houston or Indianapolis at home in the first playoff round next weekend. If the Bills win, the Dolphins would face a road trip to Kansas City to face the defending Super Bowl champion Chiefs.

Mid-January in Kansas City facing the champs, Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelsey and Taylor Swift, or in Miami against either of two teams they would be favoured to beat? That choice should provide plenty of motivation for our local heroes on Sunday evening. But the Bills did whip them by four touchdowns much earlier in the season.

Neither the Tampa Bay Buccaneers nor the Jacksonville Jaguars has yet clinched a playoff spot, but both are likely to gain fourth seed positions this weekend. The Bucs only need to defeat hapless Carolina on Sunday to win their division and face the formidable but recently fading Philadelphia Eagles in the first playoff round. The Bucs have done better than expected this year behind quarterback Baker Mayfield, but will enter the playoffs with only a 9-8 record.

Jacksonville travels to Nashville to face the fading Tennessee Titans, a team powerful in recent years but not potent in 2023. In fact, the Titans are winless in their own division, which is clearly the weakest in its conference. Tennessee is also without its starting quarterback and the Jaguars may well be bolstered by the return of Trevor Lawrence at the helm of their playoff push. Lawrence did not play this past weekend but has proven to be durable, determined and very talented so far in his career.

The overall top seeds are San Francisco in the National Conference and Baltimore in the American Conference. There’s no guarantee that either will reach the Super Bowl, however, as upsets often occur in the NFL playoffs. That could mean good news for the Dolphins if they can get hot at this critical time of the season.