Editorial: In less than two months, American voters will decide who will become the next President. All eyes are on the US in this tense time before the election. With the increasingly fierce competition between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, VietNamNet would like to introduce to readers a "handbook" of 5 articles to understand the political developments in the US leading up to this election.

Illustration of the failed assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump. Source: Axios

From the assassination attempt on Trump to President Joe Biden’s decision to drop out of the race, the 2024 US presidential election has become an event unlike any other in American history. Until this July, we thought it would be a tense rematch of the 2020 election between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. It would be the first time in more than 50 years that a Republican candidate has run for reelection after losing the previous election — the last time was in 1968, when Richard Nixon, who lost in 1960, won. Not only that, but the last time American voters voted for two candidates like that was in 1956, when Republican President Dwight Eisenhower and Democrat Adlai Stevenson faced off for the second time in four years. But just a few months after Trump won the Republican nomination, things took a turn for the worse. On July 13, Trump was shot during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania. Although he suffered only minor injuries, the incident sent shockwaves through American politics. It was the first assassination attempt on a president or presidential candidate in the United States since Ronald Reagan in 1981. The last time a presidential candidate was shot was in 1968, when Robert F. Kennedy, the younger brother of former President John F. Kennedy, was assassinated in 1963 at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. The incident raised concerns about the rise of political violence in the United States, and also sparked a wave of support from Trump and Republican voters who saw him as the victim of a political conspiracy. Just a week after Trump’s assassination attempt, President Joe Biden shocked the world by dropping out of the race on July 21. Biden cited health and age as reasons that prevented him from leading the country for another four years, and nominated Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee. This was the first time since 1968 that a sitting president eligible for re-election withdrew from the race and was replaced on the ballot shortly thereafter. This development created a huge void and internal chaos within the Democratic Party, forcing Harris to quickly build a campaign in the short time before the general election. President Biden’s decision to withdraw follows a series of public missteps and missteps throughout 2024, from mispronouncing the names of world leaders to his poor performance in the first presidential debate with Donald Trump in late June. These missteps have increased internal pressure from the Democratic Party, leading many influential members, including more than 20 lawmakers, to publicly call for Biden to drop out of the race. In addition to these two major events, this year’s US election has been influenced by many other factors. The US economy is facing many difficulties, from high inflation to instability in the labor market. Protests and riots related to issues such as racism and gun violence continue to take place across the US, becoming focal points in the campaigns of Ms. Harris and Mr. Trump. The increasingly fierce competition between the world’s two poles, the West led by the United States and the East led by China and Russia, is also a relatively important factor in this election. But for most Americans, they will only care about whether the next president can manage this great power competition to create jobs for the people, keep consumer prices low, and ensure that their tax dollars are not wasted on wars far from home.

April 2024: Mr. Trump in court for the payment concealment case in New York. Photo: Politico

Former President Trump's Legal Issues

2023 and 2024 have also seen a series of legal issues for former President Trump. He has been indicted in four separate cases, including falsifying business records related to a hush money payment during the 2016 campaign, illegally retaining classified national defense documents, and attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The first of these cases resulted in Trump being convicted of 34 counts in May 2024, all related to his alleged cover-up of a hush money payment to a porn star—making him the first former US president to be convicted of a crime. But the case in the swing state of Georgia is perhaps the most notable, where the close 2020 election saw Trump repeatedly pressuring election officials to overturn the results, leading to him being charged with attempting to change the outcome of the election. Prosecutors allege that Trump sought to spread falsehoods about widespread fraud in the voting process, and when his efforts to use the legal system to overturn the election results failed, he attempted to block the certification of those results on January 6, 2021. There was initially an expectation that the Georgia trial could begin in August, but Trump's legal team successfully argued for a delay, citing a variety of reasons including conflicts with other trials taking place at the same time, and the potential impact on his presidential campaign. The court has agreed to take up an appeal of these delays, with oral arguments expected to begin in October 2024 and take several months, essentially postponing the trial until at least early 2025. Additionally, in early July, the US Supreme Court ruled that presidents are immune from criminal liability for acts of public office, a move that is expected to significantly reduce the risk of Mr. Trump being convicted in cases involving his alleged pressure to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Despite these legal issues, former President Trump continued to campaign, and even enjoyed greater support from voters. From the beginning, Mr. Trump portrayed the prosecution as unfair and politically motivated by Biden and the Democrats, leading many of his supporters to view him as the victim of a “witch hunt.” This is the term Trump has repeatedly used during his first term to accuse the “powers” in Washington of targeting him because he is an outsider outside the American political elite. As a result, Trump’s message has received strong support from voters, as can be seen in the way Trump has used these cases to raise funds for his campaign, earning millions of dollars from the sale of products bearing his image after his arrest.

Waiting for results

With President Biden out of the race, the Democratic Party's reelection efforts now focus on Vice President Kamala Harris. She will face a favored former President Donald Trump who has enjoyed strong support from voters nationwide, emphasizing the economic message that Americans "used to be better off" under him, especially amid inflation and rising costs of living under the Biden-Harris administration. However, Trump's legal problems are causing no small amount of concern for voters who are not ready to vote for someone who is at risk of being convicted. The American electorate is clearly divided, and the upcoming election will be a major test of the stability of American politics. ************ Stay tuned for more on the Harris and Trump campaigns, and the severe divisions in American society today.

Vietnamnet.vn

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