Biden and Trump find themselves in opposite places from where they began

Republicans are unified, while Democrats are mired in a civil war

President Joe Biden walks after deboarding from Air Force One, at Dover Air Force Base in Dover, Delaware after testing positive for Covid-19 (REUTERS)

Back in 2016, during the Republican National Convention, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas — the man Donald Trump had dubbed “Lyin’ Ted” and whose wife he called ugly — decided to stick the knife into Trump. There, he told attendees to “vote with your conscience” rather than endorse Trump.

But on Tuesday evening, Cruz opened his address at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee by saying, “God Bless Donald J Trump,” a nod to Trump’s survival by the hands of a would-be assassin.

Trump, for his part, pledged that he will speak in a more unifying way when he takes the stage for the final night of the RNC.

Indeed, despite the heightened security on campus, surrounding the convention and hotels, the vibes — to borrow from Gen Z — of the RNC have been high. Don Jr, before going into a scorched-earth speech, invited his daughter Kai to talk about her grandfather, which led to one person in the crowd shouting, “Kai 2040!” The chipper attitude from most Republicans masks some fairly grim talk about mass deportations for undocumented migrants, banned abortions, and an unsafe country for trans people.

Indeed, Cruz’s speech went into gruesome detail about immigrants raping and murdering people. Nine years ago, when Trump talked about migrants bringing drugs and crime or raping women, it triggered swift denunciations. Now Republicans parrot his language. Former critics like JD Vance, who once infamously said Trump could be like Hitler, now gladly accept the offer to be his right-hand men.

Meanwhile, the walls continue to close in on Joe Biden. As Democrats continued to call for him to step aside, the president tested positive for Covid-19 just before he was due to speak at a Latino voter event in Nevada. This would have been a chance to reset with an essential voter demographic that has been drifting to the Republican Party. Instead, it immediately underlined the president’s age and vulnerability once again.

Ironically, if many Republicans were not so viscerally opposed to vaccines, Trump could perhaps troll Biden by saying, “You’re welcome” for the vaccine developed under his watch through Operation Warp Speed.

The meltdown Democrats face and the unified front from Republicans shows that each candidate is in the exact opposite spot they were when they first became the mantle-bearers of their party.

When Trump won the 2016 presidential nomination, a wide swath of the Republican Party said they would support but not endorse the nominee of their party. Paul Ryan claimed he had never seen Trump’s tweets. Later, ten Republicans in the House voted to impeach the former president and seven Republicans in the Senate voted to convict him for his actions on January 6.

Those Republicans have either retired, lost their races or died. In their wake, Republicans like Cruz and the Vance who had massive reservations have learned they can obtain power by bear-hugging Trump. Eight years ago, Senator Mike Lee of Utah endorsed Cruz and had reservations. But on Wednesday, he seemed all smiles on the convention floor.

Conversely, Biden emerged in 2020 as the consensus candidate. Democrats picked him because he was the only person they thought could beat Trump. Nominating Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren or Pete Buttigieg was too risky.

Biden didn’t use that anointing to crush his opponents, but rather to bring them into the fold. That was one of the reasons why he was able to take a narrow majority in the House and 50 seats in the Senate, and pass a litany of Democratic priorities. It’s also why Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has become one of his biggest apologists.

Now, Biden’s unwillingness to step aside risks burning down the sturdy Democratic dinner table he worked so hard to carve. A survey by Emerson College this week showed that Democrats are headed for disaster unless they nominate a younger candidate.

As of right now, it’s unclear if Biden will actually decide to step away from the job he’s wanted since at least 1987. Doing so could wind up undoing his accomplishments as a leader of the Democratic Party. This comes despite the fact that Democrats are doing so well in other races. Indeed, the Democrats don’t have a party problem; they have a Joe Biden problem — and they are trying to fix it.

Now, Biden finds himself physically isolated with Covid and politically isolated as Democrats try to quarantine his brand problem from the rest of their general election campaign. But they can’t mask up forever.