“Spring is coming!”: Groundhog Day in the Groundhog Year of American Politics

First, the news: the groundhog Phil abandoned his torpor this Friday shortly after dawn and did not see his shadow, so, according to the nice tradition without a scientific basis and at least in this part of the world, spring will come early this year.

Like every February 2, Candlemas Day, some 10,000 people gathered in Punxsutawney (pronounced ponxotouni) for America's most famous weather forecast. It dates back to 1887 and serves this lost Pennsylvania town to claim the title of “meteorology capital of the world.” Bundled from head to toe to spend a night at zero degrees in the middle of the forest, curious people from all corners of the country and some other corners of the world waited for hours for a guy in a frock coat and top hat to lift up the 7.22 to the animal with a scared face. Next to him, another man read the verdict of the “forecaster of all forecasters.” “Spring is coming!” he proclaimed, and the audience erupted in joy.

Groundhog Day has always been big in Punxsutawney, but this year it has broken its attendance record. The number of visitors continues to grow, three affable women who run the local meteorology museum explained Thursday, since the premiere in 1993 of Caught in time, masterpiece of existentialist comedy. In it, Bill Murray, in the role of an embittered weatherman, is forced to relive the same discouraging day over and over again, in which he has to cover the act of work intrusion by a sciuromorphic rodent. Although almost the entire film was shot 850 kilometers to the west, in Woodstock (Illinois), it is the great tourist attraction of Punxsutawney and managed, also in Spanish, to sneak the name of the party into popular language, as the expression of an annoying deja vu. In English, Groundhog Day is, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, “a situation in which the same generally negative or monotonous experiences happen over and over again without anything changing.”

Therefore, this leap year, Groundhog Day took on another interest, as it was celebrated at the beginning of the groundhog year of American politics, a year marked by the more than likely repetition of the electoral duel between Joe Biden and Donald Trump.

Polls confirm that a large part of the American electorate has the same face as Murray when the song is played for the umpteenth time I Got You, Babe, by Sonny & Cher, which wakes him up every morning (the same morning) at 6:00 (in another demonstration that cinema rarely imitates life: if you want to get a decent spot in the woods, you'll have to wait for Phil from 3.00). According to the latest poll, published at the end of January by Reuters/Ipsos, 67% of those surveyed confirmed their boredom “at seeing the same candidates in the presidential elections,” as well as the desire for “someone new” to be on the ballot. .

That was the opinion, on the cold Punxsutawney night, of Bill, a 55-year-old retired teacher. “This country is stuck in time,” he said, before admitting that he sees “no other option” than Biden. “At least I know what I can expect from him. Trump scares me.” Zack, a 20-year-old student from New York, regretted having to become a voter for the first time “in such an unexciting election.” “For young people, they don't give us alternatives; our system is designed for that,” he added. And if the “undecided” Mark, 54, who, coming from the outskirts of Chicago, voted in 2016 for Trump and four years later for Biden, would like there to be other options (“I understand that no one wants the job of president, in which half the country hates your guts”), Michelle at least sees the opportunity to “throw that guy out of the White House.” “With Trump we lived four years of peace, and look at us now.”

The longest campaign

To the lack of enthusiasm for a Biden-Trump second round, we must add the added tedium that the confrontation, with few precedents in American politics (it has been more than a century since two tenants of the White House have seen each other again) ), promises to be the longest electoral campaign in living memory. The primary process, which began in mid-January in Iowa with Trump's overwhelming victory over his opponents for the Republican nomination, continued in New Hampshire with another beating, this time of Nikki Haley, the last rival standing, who, all It is possible, but also very unlikely, it can still come back. If the primaries are resolved as soon as it seems, there will still be five months until the Republican convention; half a year for that of rivals.

The next stop on the Democratic side is this weekend in South Carolina, where another victory for Biden is taken for granted, who already defeated a little-known candidate, Dean Philips, in New Hampshire, despite the fact that the president was not even listed on the ballots. On Saturday, according to the poll aggregator Five Thirty Eight, he will take it ahead with 68% of the votes (compared to 5% for his opponent).

The argument of Philips, a congressman from Minneapolis and successful businessman, is that Biden has been a good president, but the worst possible candidate, above all, due to his advanced age: he will be 82 years old when he revalidates his rent in the White House and 86 when his term ends. It is an idea widespread among the most left-wing democratic sectors, which joins others, such as the fear that his support for the war in Gaza will reduce his support among Muslims and young people, and the discontent of the black voter. In the party, no one has known how to oppose him despite his physical and image weakness (he only has an approval rating of 39%) and they have waited indolently until it was too late to present an alternative, while they entertained themselves with baseless theories. as a step forward from Michelle Obama.

Laziness was also the cardinal sin pointed out by the neoconservative analyst Robert Kagan in a long essay published in Washington Post that stirred up the debate in the capital in December. It had as its title A Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable. We should stop pretending and pointed out that the opportunity to set up a front against him had vanished, trusting that justice would do its job: the magnate faces 91 crimes in four separate trials, and a legal operation is underway to disqualify him based on a little-used provision of the fourteenth amendment, which the Supreme Court will decide soon.

“So barring a Trump or Biden health crisis, revenge is inevitable,” says Georgetown University professor Michael Kazin, whose latest book is a history of the Democratic Party. “Haley remains in the race in the vain hope that one of those court cases will turn voters in his party against Trump, or maybe because he wants to lay the groundwork for 2028.” Kazin also believes that “it is too late for Democrats to change candidates, unless Biden cannot continue for some reason. Filing deadlines for many primaries have passed, and it takes time to raise money, hire staff, drum up support… And at this point, a serious challenge would only divide and weaken the party's chances of winning in November. It m
ight have been a good idea for Biden to say, about a year ago, that he wouldn't run. But not anymore”.

A rising Democratic star, one of those who could have stepped forward, attended the Groundhog Day celebration early in the morning: Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro. He easily defeated Doug Mastriano, a radical Trumpist, in 2022. The Democrats cling to that in an essential hinge state, due to the number of delegates it contributes. Biden needs it if he wants to remain in office, he took it in the 2020 elections, but the latest polls give it to Trump next November.

Although nine months before the appointment with the polls, even the demographic gurus advise taking the polls with caution, in the same way that statistics also recommend doing with the groundhog's predictions: it is right four out of 10 times. By the way, in 2020 – the year in which the Super Bowl had the same opponents: Kansas City Chiefs against San Francisco 49ers – Phil also predicted that spring would come early.

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