You won’t find her on the New Hampshire primary ballot – but there’s only one Democrat who can oust Trump

Few of the candidates have a realistic shot at removing the emperor manque with the tangerine spray tan. Unfortunately, the one woman who does has no desire ever to set foot in the White House again, writes Matthew Norman

Former first lady Michelle Obama (Getty Images)

For snapshot commentary on how the Democratic effort to excise a livid, pustulant orange melanoma from the arse cheek of the democracy it threatens to kill, consider this.

When voters go to the polls for Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary, they won’t find the second favourite for the presidential nomination on the ballot.

Stealthily, by default and through inaction, the former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg has been climbing the betting lists. With his decision to avoid the Iowa caucuses vindicated by the mega fiasco that has tainted the others, he trails only Bernie Sanders in the betting and the gap is shortening by the day.

This reflects more on the rest of the field than on him. So far, beyond buying advertising slots on TV, Bloomberg has done literally nothing. So dismal is this race that standing still qualifies as a turbocharged surge.

If a saviour of the US and the world beyond exists, it probably isn’t Bloomberg. His wealth is valued at $55bn (£43bn), which is nice, and his popularity with punters stems from the assumption that he will buy the nomination.

He very well might. But whether or not he does, you have to wonder if a septuagenarian New York plutocrat offers sufficiently clear distinction from the incumbent to beat Donald Trump in November’s election.

Can anyone? While almost 11 months is an aeon in a frenetically-paced political world, watching the contenders debate on Friday night, at the end of a hideous week for them and a perfectly glorious one for the president, a sense of futility was palpable.

Joe Biden, for so long the compelling centrist choice, sounding older than his 77 years, gives off a hint of the lethargy of a Werther’s-sucking, Countdown-watching, high backed plastic chair-entombed care home resident.

Sanders’ monotone chuntering of the Corbynesque verities have done little to dull the suspicion that being the absolute boy to good-hearted millennials wouldn’t save him for emulating his Islington counterpart.

Elizabeth Warren, the cleverest and most energised of the candidates on stage, remains immovably stuck behind Sanders in the single-lane highway of the Democrat left.

Senator Amy Klobuchar was Friday’s stand out, but her lack of charm and relatability prevents strong debate performances translating to the polls.

As for Pete Buttigieg, the smart, young, gay small town Indiana ex-mayor, his Iowa dead heat with Sanders did nothing to distract from his disconnect from African-American voters without whom no Democrat can be nominated.

Even if Buttigieg wins or almost wins in New Hampshire, his polling with black voters – approximately 2 per cent – is a lethal flaw.

There is a mounting, brooding sense that none of the above matters much anyway. On finishing second in the 1996 Olympic 400m final, the British sprinter Roger Black said it was like winning gold, because the champion Michael Johnson was so out of sight unbeatable.

This is becoming the unwanted subliminal message of Democratic elections. In the space of 36 hours last week, the confluence of the Senate acquittal, Trump’s dementedly theatrical State of the Union address, the Dems’ caucus calamity in Iowa, and another batch of excellent job figures have all imbued the president with an air of invincibility. In so far as anything he says has a subtext, Trump’s is taken from Thanos, the cosmic genocidal maniac of the Marvel Universe. I. Am. Inevitable.

More than anything, said LBJ, politics is about being able to count. Even the Democrats of Iowa, who may well have to count all the votes again, may be up to analysing one figure.

In Gallup’s latest approval ratings, Trump hit the highest number of his presidency. Admittedly, 49 per cent isn’t historically great. But historical precedent lost its predictive edge a while ago.

Given that Trump won the electoral college in 2016 with far less, anything close to 50 per cent is bone-chillingly high in the context of the kind of benign economy with which no incumbent has been denied a second term in memory.

New Hampshire may cast light on this Democratic episode of the Wacky Races by thinning the herd. If Biden slumps to fourth or fifth, and barely limps into double figures in the popular vote, he will be close to done. Ditto for Warren, who is already low on cash.

Bloomberg will enter the fray when several big states vote on Super Tuesday (3 March). Assuming Sanders remains the frontrunner, and that Buttigieg’s momentum has been reversed by African American electors of South Carolina, a diverse field could effectively be refined to two elderly Jews from diametrically opposite ends of the Democratic spectrum.

In the absence of a sudden and deep recession, neither appears to have a realistic shot at ousting the emperor manque with the tangerine spray tan.

Happily, there is one Democrat who does. Unhappily, she is the only Democrat with no desire ever to set foot in the White House again.

The volume and wickedness of racist abuse aimed at her and her family understandably dissuaded Michelle Obama from the spouse-emulating ambition Hillary Clinton narrowly failed to achieve.

But unless a delegation of the desperate, presumably led by her husband, somehow persuades Obama to sublimate her distaste for the presidency beneath ungodly devotion to duty, it seems virtually certain to remain in its current, unfeasibly dainty hands.