US Election: Three key challenges for Donald Trump in US election
Little more than a month ago, Donald Trump looked almost certain to return to the White House. Kamala Harris’ entry to the race has changed things – and laid bare the hurdles Mr Trump must navigate if he’s to come out on top in November.
Donald Trump and Kamala Harris face intense scrutiny in the remaining two months of the US election campaign.
It all but seemed certain the former president would return to the White House just over a month ago, after surviving an assassination attempt alongside Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance.
But the replacement of the current president with Ms Harris has brought his campaign back to earth: polling since her introduction has seen her surge what was an election in the bag for Mr Trump into a competitive race.
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Three challenges Harris must overcome to beat Trump
With just under two months to go until the election, here’s a look at three key challenges for the former president…
Project 2025
“Project 2025” is a blueprint for government that Mr Trump’s opponents say would institutionalise Trumpism.
It is a plan produced by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank based in Washington DC, whose members are, largely, former employees and officials of the Trump White House administration.
Even though some of his key allies are involved, Mr Trump has insisted he knows nothing about Project 2025 and has no idea who is behind it.
Project 2025 is a plan to reshape the US government in terms of how it looks and how it operates, turning it into an ultra-conservative institution with presidential power hugely enhanced.
A 900+ page policy roadmap includes proposals to place federal agencies, including the Department of Justice, under direct presidential control.
It recommends dismantling the Departments of Education and Homeland Security, as well as re-assigning government civil servants and replacing them with political appointees.
On abortion, it recommends further restrictions than already exist and proposes a crackdown on what it calls “woke ideology”.
Project 2025 is being used by the Harris campaign team strategy to target voters in the middle.
They have taken out TV ads and trained canvassers to characterise it as an extremist agenda for a future Trump administration.
Dan Kanninen, the campaign’s battleground states director, said in a statement to NBC News: “We are speaking to those Americans who are turned off by Trump’s extremism and making sure they know there’s a home for them in vice president Harris’s campaign.”
Criminality
Being a crook can only take someone so far.
There’s no doubt Trump’s criminal conviction in New York has galvanised the MAGA base behind his claims of innocence and victimhood.
His whole political career has been built on the story he tells of a man against the establishment, and the part about the porn star and the hush money is but another chapter.
The question is whether he can find a receptive audience beyond the core support.
Polls conducted during and after Trump’s trial indicated it would impact negatively on his vote, albeit not on a huge, result-defining scale.
The effects of his criminality, proven and alleged, have still to play out in the two months before America votes.
We should learn more about the January 6 election subversion case, even if it does not get to trial, and that could feed into the Democrats’ main line of attack that Democracy itself is on the ballot and under threat from Trump.
We will not get Trump’s New York sentencing as that has been postponed, at his request, until after the election. Nor will we have the hearing on whether the conviction is affected by a recent Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity for official acts.
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The judge in the New York case will also decide on that following the election.
It leaves open the possibility that Trump will have his wish to have the guilty verdict tossed out. It would be big news, if and when it happens.
For now, he hopes it casts a big enough doubt over the process to minimise its impact at the ballot box.
Abortion and reproductive rights
Abortion is one of the big issues in this election, no question. The question is where Mr Trump stands on the matter.
His position has been that abortion rights should be a matter for US states to decide but, within the past couple of weeks, he has sown confusion over his stance.
In an interview, he said Florida’s ban after six weeks of pregnancy was too strict but then appeared to contradict himself when he said he would vote ‘no’ to changing it.
He also said that, if elected, his government would cover the cost of in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) – this, after he has boasted about enabling the end of Roe v Wade, the Supreme Court decision that has cast doubt over IVF access.
His opponents insist he would say anything on abortion to get elected and the Harris campaign calls him a fundamental threat to reproductive freedom and to women’s healthcare generally.
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It is an issue that has strong traction with voters and was instrumental in Democratic success at the 2022 primaries.
Trump is treading a line between pro-life and pro-choice and is troubled by the differing demands of key demographics.
The issue of reproductive rights is important to the evangelicals who helped propel him to power but it also resonates strongly with the wider female vote. He wants both.
