Democrats hope to use crisis to transform election

It’s just over a week since Donald Trump was almost assassinated at a rally in Pennsylvania. And in the last eight days the US presidential election has been totally turned on its head.

In that short time Trump has been greeted like a messiah at the Republican National Convention and crowned as the party’s candidate. Whilst Joe Biden has been reluctantly forced out of the race.

Obviously it was Mr Biden’s disastrous performance in the televised debate last month that caused the panic within the Democratic Party – but their doubts went deeper than that.

The president was trailing Trump in the polls before he challenged his opponent to a live televised debate. He only came up with that idea because he urgently needed to reset his campaign.

The hope was that getting voters to focus on what Trump could do if he was re-elected to the White House would boost support for Mr Biden. His campaign was based around the idea that if this election was a referendum on Trump then Mr Biden would win.

But the rambling and incoherent performance from the president immediately tuned this into a referendum on Mr Biden and his fitness for office.

Suddenly it was an open secret that the president had episodes in which he was far from cogent. The excuses – he had a cold, he had jet-lag – were weak and scarcely believable.

Savvy Democrats also sensed a potential opportunity. A chance to transform this race and maybe energise voters who were seriously disenchanted with having to make a choice between the same two old men who ran against each other last time.

Any contest to select a new candidate will have to be brief. The Democratic National Convention is scheduled to confirm its candidate on 19 August.

But four weeks of debates, hustings and town hall events with some of the party’s talented and experienced younger candidates could be exciting and attract the attention a new nominee will need.

Yet it seems that the party is rapidly coalescing around Vice-President Kamala Harris as their new candidate. So many elected representatives, senators and party grandees are backing her that she may be unassailable.

None of the serious contenders who could have challenged her – California Governor Gavin Newson, Michigan Governor Gretchen Witmer or Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro are going to put up a fight. As they say in American sports, “the fix is in”.