Professor Bob Mattes shares his thoughts with Danny Munro about the presidential race that’s leaving voters with more questions than answers.
With polling booths scheduled to open their doors on November 5th, we are now officially less than a year out from America’s most unprecedented, unpredictable and uninspiring election in at least four years.
Though the candidates are yet to be officially nominated, it looks increasingly likely that the race will be less of a 100-metre sprint and more of a hobble towards the 270 electoral college votes required to grant one lucky candidate the keys to the presidential palace. At the time of writing, the bookies have both Biden and Trump as clear favourites to be the nomination for their respective parties, with the latter tipped as next in line for a second swing at a position that most people still can’t believe he found himself in in the first place. The obvious issue with the proposed candidates, according to Political Science Professor Bob Mattes, is the feeling of uncertainty looming over both their heads: “We’re still not completely clear on if these two candidates are even going to be candidates,” the Ohio-born scholar explains. “I mean, god forbid, but anything could happen to either of these candidates in the next year.”
Matte’s comments come amid a set of rather differing circumstances between the two favourites for the job. Biden, who will be 82 by the time the 47th President is inaugurated, has enjoyed a prolonged and fruitful career. But time waits for no man, and in the last few weeks a couple of confused walks off stage, a fair deal of mumbling and a muddling of Taylor Swift and Britney Spears has done nothing to help his ‘sleepy’ reputation.
While there isn’t so much as an obvious replacement for Biden, Mattes can’t help but speculate about whether any senior figures in the Democratic party may be planning on having a stern word in the ear of Obama’s former righthand man: “I wonder to what extent somebody might speak truth to power and go to Biden and say ‘Look, Mr President, you’ve done a wonderful job… but you need to step aside.’ Because almost any unnamed Democrat will beat Donald Trump. If you say Donald Trump or ‘A Democrat’, there’s a five or six point margin for ‘A Democrat’. The surveys show that. But if you put Joe Biden’s name in there, then it changes.”
Trump, on the other hand, appears as sharp as ever on his campaign trail, as he bounces from state to state proclaiming to sizable crowds about the state of Biden’s America. Seemingly polling rather positively among the Republican base (ABC has Trump at around 60% of the Republican vote, coasting ahead of the likes of Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley), Trump’s most pressing issue is the fact that, as it stands, the former Apprentice host is facing no less than 91 charges spread across four separate criminal cases – the likes of which include shouts of conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government and racketeering. Mattes labels Trump’s legal situation as “very convoluted”, which is putting it rather mildly. “I think the decision (on whether Trump can legally run for president) is going to go immediately to the United States Supreme Court,” says Mattes. “It could be really interesting. Really interesting.” Three of them [the nine Supreme Court judges] are people that Trump appointed, so there will be requests for them to recuse themselves, in which you would have a six person court, which could lead to a 3-3 deadlock – and then there’s no opinion! We’re getting into a constitutional crisis here at this time.”
When asked bluntly who he believes will be the next President of the United States, Mattes can’t help but focus on Trump, though he admits such a re-election would be scandalous. “Trump has been like a Houdini, getting out of everything… (but) if he has three tries for a criminal conviction, I can’t see it. And if he does get re-elected, then maybe that’s an endpoint to liberal democracy in the United States.”
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