US Presidential Election 2024: What it will mean for US, India, and the world if Trump 2.0 becomes a reality

The 60th quadrennial election to select the new President of the United States of America will be held on Tuesday, 5 November, 2024. With the commencement of the election year, despite a crowded list of Republican presidential candidates, it is most likely to be a rematch between Donald Trump the 45th president of the US and Joe Biden the 46th President. Enter the dragon With 333 days to go to the election day, the battlefront is crowded and colourful and abounds with X-factor. The current and oldest serving President, Joe Biden, 81, bereft of a serious challenger, is the Democratic front-runner, notwithstanding, two more in the fray-three times congressman Dean Phillip, 54 and self-help Guru and author Marianne Williamson, 71. Contrarily, on the Republican menu, seven candidates entered the ring but have since exited – former vice president, Mike Pence; North Dakota governor Doug Burgum, 67; radio host and columnist Larry Elder, 71; former Texas congressman, Will Hurd, 46; businessman Perry Johnson, 75; South Carolina senator, Tim Scott, 58 and Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, 46. Nonetheless, on date, there exists a list of wannabe six candidates vying to be the Republican nominee and become the 47th  US President. They are- 45th President and business tycoon, Donald Trump, 77; Florida governor Ron DeSantis, 45; former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador, Nikki Haley, 51; entrepreneur and activist Vivek Ramaswamy, 38; former New Jersey governor, Chris Christie, 61and former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson. Two more, former Michigan congressman Mike Rogers, 65 and Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin, 56 are raring to enter the dragon. And the nominee is On the night of 7 December, in the two-hour fourth and final Republican presidential debate of the year held at the University of Alabama and broadcast on NewsNation (in all probability the last such debate before the  Iowa caucuses that are six weeks away) between the republican nominee aspirants, Nicki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy, Chris Christie and Ron DeSantis, with Donald Trump,  conspicuously absent once again, it was ascendency time for the fortune of Nikki Haley in a narrowed down Republican race, even though she amid feisty personal clashes and insults was on the rapid-fire, firing line of Ramaswami and DeSantis for her being too cosy with American corporations, receiving support from wealthy democratic donors on the Wall Street and in Silicon Valley and sitting on the lucrative Boeing Board chair. It was clearly an advantage for Haley. She consolidated her position as the likely second-most favourite Republican candidate with a substantially stronger position than Ron DeSantis in New Hampshire and South Carolina and tied with him in the second position in Iowa. But both Haley and DeSantis trail substantially behind Trump. But it isn’t over till over. Over to Milwaukee The official Republican 2024 primaries will be held between mid-January and June. It is still a bridge too far with two imponderables: One, to succeed in nomination, the candidates will need to garner the support of Republican delegates by winning or performing credibly in each state caucus or primary. Two, despite all the bravado, there is a tinge of uncertainty to the campaign of Trump due to a federal trial that charges the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, for having conspired to overthrow the results of 2020 Presidential elections. His trial is set to begin on 4 March, barely a day before Super Tuesday, the largest and possibly most important single day of the primaries. The road to Washington for Republican nomination aspirants is still some distance away, including for the frontrunner Donald J Trump. Whoever eventually wins the backing of a majority of delegates, will be the presumptive nominee and will be formally anointed the official nominee on 15-18 July, 2024 at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. A probable rematch Despite an array of Republican hopefuls lined up, unless a major hurricane unfolds swiftly, odds are high that, in all probability, the race to be sworn in as the next US President on 20 January, 2025, is likely going to be a rematch between the incumbent and oldest serving 46th President, Joe Biden and his predecessor, the three-time contestant, and  45th  President Doland Trump. Despite a litany of woes, of months of legal troubles − or perhaps because of them − Trump seems to have strengthened his clutches on the Republican nomination. As such it is nearly cast in iron that the 2024 campaign for “Who will be the President?” will be a raucous slugfest between two exceedingly well-known rivals. 10-0, Love All or 5-1 It is 10-0 In September a poll conducted by The Washington Post and ABC, between 15 to 20 September, with a random sample of 1,006 US adults revealed that Trump led Biden by a margin of 10 per cent with the former securing 52 per cent votes against 42 per cent of Biden. It is Love All. On 23 October a four-day survey of 1,000 registered voters by landline and cellphone conducted by new USA Today/Suffolk University, yielded a love-all result – a tie between, Biden and Trump, each commanding 37 per cent of the votes with the independent candidate, Robert F Kennedy Jr., scion of the Kennedy family costing Trump what would have been a narrow lead. The Muddy Pitch The findings of the above survey underline the complicated calculus and yet unsettled politics of a likely rematch, with the pitch substantially muddied by at least one key independent candidate, a Kennedy and another possible independent in the fray, progressive activist Cornel West. The likely presence of at least two independents in the 2024 election, sends this author down the memory lane to the 1992 presidential election. Then thanks to a 19 per cent share of the popular votes amassed by billionaire businessman H Ross Perot, Bill Clinton vanquished the then-president George HW Bush even though Clinton got merely 43 per cent of the popular votes. Well. It is complicated. It is 5-1 In another survey result published on 5 November, by The New York Times and Siena College conducted from 22 October to 3 November, based on responses from 3,662 registered voters, the result was 5-1 in favour of Trump in six swing states which Biden had won in 2020. In the six battleground states, in a hypothetical rematch, Trump led Biden by ten points in Nevada, six points in Georgia, five points in Arizona, five points in Michigan and four points in Pennsylvania. It was only in one state Wisconsin, the Badger State that Biden led Trump in the Badger State by a narrow margin of two points. No clear winner or loser And the most recent three last week polls, The Economist/YouGov and NBC News and Morning Consult, have better news for the president because they place Biden ahead of Trump by a point or two. As such, there is no clear winner. I also say what I say because- One, all surveys are based on unreliable telephonic surveys of a small sample of between 1,000-3,000 voters. Two, one year is too long a time. The surveys depict a snapshot of how things appear now, not a forecast of how they will appear on the election day, which is a full year away. Three, in the last two decades US Presidential elections have been pretty rigid and close. A case in point is in 2016 and 2020, when Trump got 46 per cent and 47 per cent votes. In all probability, he may end in the same vicinity in 2024, and that will be close with the winner taking the cake and eating it too with the margin of just tens of thousands of votes in a few battleground swing states. The X factor Make no mistake in the battle between Blue and Red, there exist sheds of Grey, the X-factor, the game spoiler or enabler depending upon which side of the fence one is. The prominent X-factors are: One, in a battle largely between Blue and Red, there are Greys known as Robert F Kennedy Jr, scion of America’s most famous political dynasty and a well-known and outspoken progressive activist, philosopher and academic, 70-year-old Cornel West with the impeccable credentials of having taught at Ivy League, Harvard, Princeton and Yale. If either does what billionaire businessman H Ross Perot, did to the 1992 elections, the election calculus gets inverted. Two, it is a war of survival between two oldies On Inauguration Day January 20, 2025, Biden will be 82, Trump will be 78. Their health is a closely guarded secret’. Though improbable what if in the run-up to the election, after the completion of primaries and nomination, one of the two, is no more on the Planet America. Death comes when it comes. Three, what if the US economy suddenly tanks and inflation spikes? Or what if a major international war or another pandemic comes sooner? Four, on date, if no more charges are added, one of the potential next US Presidents, faces 91 criminal charges in four separate trials all likely before elections with a maximum possible punishment of a hundred years on the other side of the bar. What if he is imprisoned before he is elected President? Well, these are what-ifs? Improbable. Yet Probable. The answer will arrive in the next 333cdays. If it is Trump all the way Donald Trump, during an event on 5 December in Iowa, predicted he would receive 150 million votes from the public in the 2024 US presidential election. Even if he gets less, Trump Part 2.0 is highly probabilistic. There is something known as the ‘incumbency curse’. It hit Trump in 2020. It might haunt Biden in 2024. It is worth noting that in Trump Part 1.0, the US economy performed well and reached historic milestones on jobs, income and stock prices till the Covid-19 pandemic hit below the belt. So, it is possible that in 2024 it is Trump all the way. If that happens, going by the track record of Trump Part 1.0 it will again be an uncertain, uncharted time for bilateralism and multilateralism. Trump is on record for the futility of the United Nations in today’s era. For India too it will be an uncertain mixed back going by the past trackrecord despite bonhomie between Trump and Prime Minister Modi. What Trump Part 2.0 will mean for India and the world, will be known only when and if Trump Part 2.0 unfolds. But the real action of Trump Part 2.0 is likely to unfold in “Planet America”.  Trump remains steadfast in his conviction that the 2020 presidency was stolen from him. Also, in a latest weekend appearance in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Trump, called Biden names – “the destroyer of American democracy”. Opinion polls predict that the twice impeached, quadruply indicted ex-president returning to Oval Office, may bring in its train, the “Revenge Term”. And as he marches to retake the White House, unlike the principles of republican governance in the past it is feared, he would wield his executive authority to influence school curricula, prevent doctors from providing medical interventions for young transgender people and pressurise police to severe anticrime policies, the areas where in US historically state or local governance had its way majorly. There is also a likelihood of deportations, trade wars, drug dealer death penalty. Trump’s speeches also indicate a second term would likely rewrite the rules of presidential power in America. There exist some more extreme views- “Trump’s Plans for a Second Term Are So Bad That They Almost Make the First One Look Good”.  As per a The Economist report “Donald Trump poses the biggest danger to the world in 2024” and Liz Cheney has gone a step further and warned Trump will never leave office if he’s elected president again. Apocalyptic fears need not come true Fears abound. But apocalyptic fears need not come true. Worst seldom happens in a robust democratic country like America. I will quote Anthony Zurcher who writes on BBC News from Washington “behind the scenes, Trump and his team are putting together a plan for power, determined to avoid the mistakes of 2016”. The author, a keen watcher of changing international scenarios, is a multi-disciplinary thought leader with action bias and an India-based International Impact Consultant. He works as President of Advisory Services in consulting company Barsyl. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views. Read all the Latest News , Trending News , Cricket News , Bollywood News , India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook , Twitter and Instagram .