No cakewalk for Biden against Trump

Let us finish the job,

said US President Joe Biden in his re-election video. The rest of us, including Mr Biden, could have been forgiven for thinking he had already done that by defeating Donald Trump in 2020. Yet here we are again: Two bald men fighting over a comb, as writer Jorge Luis Borges depicted the British-Argentine war over the Falklands. America is no comb, and Trump has plenty of hair. Nor is he certain to be the Republican nominee. But a repeat battle between ageing men would test America’s tolerance.

Many rashly assume that Mr Biden can easily beat Trump. Nothing could be more certain in Mr Biden’s mind. With some reason, he believes that had he, rather than Mrs Hillary Clinton, been the Democratic nominee in 2016, Trump would never have become president. Those 77,000 votes that were Trump’s winning margin in a handful of Midwestern states tipped him over the electoral college line, included Mr Biden’s native Pennsylvania. In 2020, of course, Mr Biden was the only candidate to defeat Trump in an election.