Analysis: decisive week will reveal the options for the 2024 American elections

A decisive week in politics will clarify the choice Americans will face in November, in a fateful and unprecedented election that is already testing long-held interpretations of the Constitution and the powers of the Presidency.

Donald Trump is expected to emerge from the Super Tuesday Republican primaries in 15 states within striking distance of his third consecutive Republican nomination.

As he seeks an impressive return to the White House four years after trying to overturn the last election, the former president shows that a new term would be even more extreme than his first.

Meanwhile, President Joe Biden will take the stage before a large television audience two nights later for his State of the Union address.

It is a critical test for an 81-year-old president who faces deep doubts that he is fit to serve a second term as he is beset by global crises and disillusionment with his performance at home.

A race between the current president and the former president is something that polls show many Americans fear.

But Trump and Biden's about-faces this week will highlight their almost certain rematch, barring health crises or other surprise events.

Biden is highly vulnerable in a race that has no clear leader, according to the US poll average. CNN .

The November elections are already increasing pressure on political and electoral institutions, the Constitution and America's fragile national unity.

The country has never had an election in which a candidate faced multiple criminal trials and ran on the false premise that he was illegally removed from power.

The Supreme Court could hand down a decision in an important case as early as Monday, over the Colorado Supreme Court's decision to remove the former president from the ballot due to the 14th Amendment's ban on insurrectionists.

And last week, the Supreme Court agreed to hear Trump's claims about broad presidential immunity, which he made in response to his accusation of trying to steal the 2020 election.

The move further delayed the former president's federal criminal trial for election interference, which Trump – who seeks to delay his trials beyond the 2024 election – considered a victory.

Both cases raise huge questions about the legal basis of the electoral system and whether presidents are truly subject to the same laws as other citizens.

Four years ago, the Super Tuesday Democratic primaries saw Biden stage a stunning political comeback, defeating his rival, Senator Bernie Sanders, and taking decisive control of the Democratic nomination.

This year's edition is likely to be equally decisive for Trump, who is aiming for a sweep of big states to continue his cruise in early state contests and hopes to finally crush his last remaining rival, former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley.

A third nomination for Trump would represent an extraordinary comeback after he left office in disgrace, two weeks after a mob of his supporters stormed the US Capitol in an attempt to stop the certification of Biden's election victory.

Ahead of a likely general election showdown, Trump's appetite for testing the rule of law and the Constitution remains undimmed.

He promises a presidency of “retribution” against his political enemies, in a campaign that pulses with some of the most venomous anti-immigration and autocratic rhetoric in modern US history.

Biden's appearance in the House of Representatives on Thursday night will therefore not only mark a vital opportunity to court a prime-time audience and cultivate a buzz that will reach many more viewers on social media.

It will embody his campaign's implicit narrative: While voters may worry about the oldest president in history running a second term that would end when he is 86, he is the final bulwark standing between a second Trump presidency, which he warns will It could destroy American democracy.

Trump's Momentum Is Growing

The former president's march towards the Republican nomination accelerated over the weekend with his victories in the party caucuses in Idaho and Missouri and after he won all of Michigan's delegates to follow up on his resounding victory in the state's primary last week .

The GOP front-runner won't be able to reach the 1,215 delegates needed to win the nomination on Tuesday night, but his expected victories in a series of states with 865 delegates at stake will make him the presumptive GOP nominee in all, except in the name.

According to the latest calculations by CNN , Trump has 247 delegates compared to Haley's 43. She scored her first victory on Sunday night when she won the Republican Party primary in Washington, DC.

Trump's dominance in the Republican primary race allowed him to consolidate the party's congressional leaders around him. South Dakota Sen. John Thune, the No. 2 Republican leader in the Senate, endorsed him last week.

And Mitch McConnell's announcement last week that he will soon step down as Senate GOP leader underscored the former president's populist, nationalist transformation of a party once rooted in fiscal conservatism and globalism.

Haley, hurt by the loss of her state primary in South Carolina last month, vowed on Sunday to “keep fighting” because “70% of Americans say they don’t want Donald Trump or Joe Biden.”

But there will be growing pressure on her to withdraw from the race if her opponent destroys her on Tuesday.

“At some point, you have to give up,” Republican Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma told CNN on Sunday.

“I thought she would give up after losing in her own state in horrible fashion. Now as we enter Super Tuesday, there is no chance of her winning a single state.”

As Trump consolidates his power within the Republican Party, his rhetoric has become even more savage, in a campaign that is now inseparable from his defense in his multiple criminal trials.

The former president, posing as a political “dissenter,” falsely classifies his staggering bill for hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation after several lost civil cases as evidence of a campaign of political persecution by the Biden administration.

On Saturday (2), Trump characteristically projected onto Biden the exact crime of which he himself is accused in several criminal cases, underlining the threat that the former president would pose to democratic institutions if he regained the White House.

He told supporters in Greensboro, North Carolina, that Biden's conduct amid a crisis at the southern border amounted to “a conspiracy to overthrow the United States of America.”

He said: “Biden and his accomplices want to collapse the American system, overturn the will of true American voters and establish a new power base that gives them control for generations.”

Trump's comments reflect the vital importance of his case before the Supreme Court over his claim to near-blanket presidential immunity.

The case is important not only in relation to its interference in the 2020 election; this points to his aspirations for unrestricted political power if he wins in November.

Biden is failing to calm concerns about his age

As his likely contest with Trump approaches, Biden heads into his State of the Union address under enormous pressure to present himself as a forceful and optimistic figure.

He needs to show that he is a president in command and that he can convey a vision for the future.

A new round of polls released over the weekend highlighted Biden's challenges.

The polls paint a picture of a nation that most voters think is headed in the wrong direction as they hope to feel the economic benefits that official data shows — and the White House insists — is a strong recovery.

Biden appears vulnerable in these polls about his management of the economy, inflation, the US southern border, the war in Ukraine and the war between Israel and Hamas.

But the most surprising aspect of the new polls from The New York Times/Siena College and The Wall Street Journal lies in the deep concerns many voters have about the president's age and abilities.

Most voters who supported Biden in 2020 now say he is too old to serve effectively as president, according to the Times poll.

There are fewer concerns about 77-year-old Trump's fitness. In the Wall Street Journal poll, 73% of respondents said Biden was too old to run for re-election. About 52% thought the same of Trump.

In recent weeks, the president has tried to deflect those concerns by joking about his age. And last week, he was certified fit to serve by his medical team following his annual physical.

Biden has also spent recent weeks trying to bolster key elements of his coalition, including unionized workers and minority and younger voters.

And Democrats plan to pressure Republicans over hardline abortion restrictions supported by Republican state legislatures and conservative judges in the wake of the Supreme Court's nullification of the nation's constitutional right to abortion.

But new research suggests the president's efforts have done little to dismantle one of his biggest obstacles to reelection — his age.

That's why his State of the Union address is becoming one of the most important speeches of this century.

His appearance will come at a tense time. Another deadline is approaching to avoid a government shutdown.

Although leaders from both chambers of Congress have reached a bipartisan agreement on spending, the GOP's slim majority in the House means any piece of legislation is a heavy lift.

Biden is, however, under pressure as he pushes for a long-term pause in fighting between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

Last week's Michigan primary showed how anger among Arab-American and progressive voters over his handling of the war could threaten his prospects in a vital, general election-deciding state.

Biden is also demanding that House Speaker Mike Johnson put on the floor a foreign aid bill that would send $60 billion in arms and other aid to Ukraine.

Last year, Biden's annual speech was a triumph of sorts, as he dismissed Republicans who upset him and laid a trap for them, while Democrats tried to portray the House majority as extremists.

The president has positioned himself as the last line of defense against the excesses of what he called “ultra MAGA” (Make America Great Again) Republicans. This is still the cornerstone of his re-election strategy.

This year, the visual impression that the oldest president in history gives about his vigor and mental acuity may be as important as anything he actually says.