January 29, 2024 11:59 am
Donald Trump's victory in the New Hampshire primary, which paved his way to the Republican Party's nomination, confirmed something that those involved in the United States have long noted: American electoral politics is becoming boring. There was a moment of effervescence, the most recent one, when the polls showed the rise of Ron DeSantis between late 2022 and early 2023. It seemed to be the last sign of that vitality that regularly allows new and disruptive figures to establish themselves on the national stage (Ronald Reagan in 1980, Bill Clinton in 1992, Barack Obama in 2008, Donald Trump in 2016).
It took only a very short time to realize that DeSantis' candidacy was neither new nor disruptive. That's why Americans have been expecting for more than a year that the 2024 presidential election will be a repeat of the 2020 election, a challenge between two politicians everyone knows and about which everyone already has an opinion.
This static is primarily a problem for the media, which loses viewers and readers and thus advertising and money. Max Tani looked into this on Semafor a few days ago. After the New Hampshire primary, Tani noticed that there were fewer journalists than usual and that many campaign events were conducted laboriously and without the excitement that typically accompanies this phase of the primary.
“On Thursday, Nikki Haley, Trump's sole challenger, started an event 10 minutes early and left three minutes after it was scheduled to begin, while some reporters were still arriving. He had no further events planned until a late evening meeting with constituents that was broadcast on CNN,” Tani wrote. CBS had scheduled a debate between Republican candidates in Nevada in February, but canceled it in the fall because it feared, rightly, that the race would have been decided by then.
There will be an element of unpredictability in Trump's trials in the coming months, but it is clear that even he cannot attract as much attention and interest as he did eight years ago when he first ran. In part, it was he who distanced himself from the spotlight by refusing to participate in televised debates with the other candidates in the primary (a strategy that worked at the political level) and returning to Twitter when given the opportunity.
Then the approach of many media outlets changed after years of thinking about how to deal with such a controversial politician who at some point even became dangerous. McKay Coppins wrote in the Atlantic: “Major cable networks no longer broadcast his speeches live as they once did, for fear of being accused of amplifying his lies.” Today, Trump exists in the minds of many Americans as a nebulous silhouette made up of preconceived notions and outdated impressions – and not as a real person who tells the country every day who he is and what he wants to do in a second term.”
But perhaps the main reason for the decline in interest is that Trump has also become boring. Tani writes: “It's like the old rock bands that go on tour with a new album: They try out something from the new repertoire, but mostly only play the hits that the audience knows.” The rally he held on March 19th .January in Concord, New Hampshire, had all the elements of his events of the last eight years: he attacked his now hopeless Republican opponents; he complained about Russiagate, the 2016 investigation into his ties with Russia; he read the lyrics to “The Snake,” the hit song of his 2016 campaign; He called for the death penalty for people convicted of drug trafficking. One supporter chanted “Build the wall,” others chanted “Lock her up,” arrest her (a slogan once dedicated to Hillary Clinton, now Vice President Kamala Harris). Without the evidence of the 2020 election and ongoing litigation, it would be difficult to say what year we are in.”
The viewing and reading indices confirm the decline in attention. Political news traffic on the sites has declined compared to the 2020 and 2016 presidential primaries. TV ratings for the Iowa caucuses were dismal. Not even Fox News, the right-wing network that virtually launched Trump's political career, was saved. This fatigue could be particularly problematic for Democrats, who are hoping for a campaign focused on the former president to hide Biden's weaknesses and cast the election as a choice between defending democracy and risking an authoritarian turn .
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The disengagement of an important part of public opinion from national politics appears to extend beyond the current election cycle. One factor concerns the increase in the average age of politicians, which is blocking generational change and reinforcing the feeling of a less dynamic system. Much has been said about the ages of Biden (81) and Trump (77), who were already the two oldest presidents in the history of the United States and are now facing off again. But the register issue affects the entire political class at the federal level.
In the New York Review of Books, Fintan O'Toole wrote that the United States is increasingly resembling a gerontocracy. “In 2014 they elected the oldest congress in their history. The record didn't last long: it was broken in 2016. And then again in 2018. And again in 2020, when — remarkably — most of the incumbents who lost their seats were replaced by someone even older. In the 2022 midterm elections, the House of Representatives became slightly younger (the average age of representatives fell by a year, from 59 to 58), but the average age of senators continued to rise and is now over 65. The average age of MEPs elected in 2019 is fifty years. In Canada, the average age of the House of Commons is fifty-two. In the Australian Parliament it's fifty-one years.” Polls show 79 percent of Americans support upper age limits for elected officials in Washington and 74 percent support Supreme Court justices.
Another factor concerns a political system that many people find too rigid because it forces a choice between two parties and can suppress potential political alternatives. In recent years, the number of voters who have a negative opinion of parties has increased, and with it – especially among those under 30, who are more likely to vote for Democrats – the proportion of those who would like to have more choice.
This text comes from the Americana newsletter.
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