Trump or Biden? U.S. At Crossroads

The existential choice facing America was laid bare during the recent Party Conventions, as Donald Trump and Joe Biden set out radically contrasting visions for a nation impacted by the pandemic, economic meltdown, unemployment, and racial injustice. Biden, the former vice-president and the Democratic nominee for president in November, delivered a somber speech, suggesting the US is at one of the most important crossroads in its history, calling Americans to choose light over darkness. For once, President Trump spoke the truth during the recent Republican National Convention. He roared that this election is the most important one deciding which direction the country will take. According to the Washington Post as of July 9, he has made 20,000 false or misleading claims while in office – a tsunami of untruths. “We can be forgiven for believing that the president is more interested in power than in principle,” he said, adding that Trump “is part of the problem, and accelerates it,” Joe Biden said. He compared the president to notoriously racist officials from the 1960s, adding: “I promise you this. I won’t traffic in fear and division. I won’t fan the flames of hate. I will seek to heal the racial wounds that have long plagued this country – not use them for political gain.” A vote for Joe Biden is a vote to preserve democracy and the noble principles the U.S. stands for. Reflecting this, a group representing almost 100 former Republican lawmakers and officials have endorsed Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden in an effort to defeat President Donald Trump in the November 3 election. The group, called Republicans & Independents for Biden, led by former New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman, stated that its “sole mission is to defeat Donald Trump and elect Joe Biden the next President of the US”. “More than 180,000 Americans are dead from a pandemic that, with consistent leadership, could have been contained. Instead, it has been left to spin out of control by a President who ignored it, refused to lead and endangered American lives,” Whitman said in a statement. “In this moment of great national crisis, we need to elect a leader matched to the moment, someone who can restore competence to the Oval Office and unify the country. “Joe Biden is that leader,” Whitman added. The group also includes former Republican Governors Rick Snyder and Bill Weld, a onetime 2020 presidential candidate. As nearly 55 days left for the Polls for this historic election, several polls reveal that former Vice President Joe Biden maintains his grip on the 2020 race for president. Biden’s up 52% to 42% over President Donald Trump among likely voters nationally, and he has a 50% to 44% edge over Trump in the key battleground state of Wisconsin as well. Biden’s 10 point and 6 point advantages are the exact same they were when CBS News/YouGov polled the contests before the party conventions. The polls are reflective of a race that barely budges even after two conventions, protests and unrest in some cities over police brutality and as the nation navigates the coronavirus pandemic. Indeed, the stability of this race is record breaking when looking at polling dating back to 1940. A Monmouth University poll released on Wednesday found the two candidates virtually tied in Pennsylvania, one of Trump’s key pickups over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2016. Most polls suggest Biden is ahead in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – three industrial states his Republican rival won by margins of less than 1% to clinch victory in 2016. But it’s the battleground states where Trump won big in 2016 that his campaign team will be most worried about. His winning margin in Iowa, Ohio and Texas was between 8-10% back then but it’s looking much closer in all three at the moment. Betting markets, however, are certainly not writing Trump off just yet. The latest odds give him just less than a 50% chance of winning on 3 November, which suggests some people expect the outlook to change a lot over the next few weeks. But political analysts are less convinced about his chances of re-election. FiveThirtyEight, a political analysis website, says Biden is “favored” to win the election, while The Economist says Biden is “likely” to beat Trump.