(Originally published here in the South China Morning Post on November 27, 2023.)

American Thanksgiving, the traditional setting for millions of political discussions – or arguments – was timed well for a new phase of assumptions about the country’s general election next year.

Until shortly before the holiday, Donald Trump’s run as the Republican Party’s nominee was regarded as the only possible outcome. While he remains well out in front, recent polling shows some crucial changes that might not bode well for Trump’s vicious brand of politics.

Let’s start with candidate Ron DeSantis. Florida’s governor was previously seen as a version of Trump who was capable of pulling in moderate voters uncomfortable with the former president’s rhetorical extremes and the mountains of evidence pointing towards his role in efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, Trump’s ambassador to the UN, has gained traction against DeSantis, who is losing some of his most important donors. In Iowa – a key primary state where the Florida’s governor has spent heavily in terms of time and money – she is nearly even with DeSantis. In New Hampshire, another important primary state, she is in second place and rising.

More tellingly, Chris Christie, the most stridently anti-Trump among the Republican candidates, is also gaining ground and has pulled ahead of DeSantis in at least one poll.

One common criticism of DeSantis is that his inability to connect with voters is undermining his candidacy, but that overlooks the power of Trump’s tactics. The former president tacked further to the right with messaging about the “vermin” he plans to prosecute – i.e. anyone testifying against him – with a newly politicised bureaucracy that will emerge once those respecting the rules of a civilised democracy are frogmarched out of the Justice Department.

With his recent warning that the enemy lies within, we’ve been put on notice that he intends to push the Republican Party’s alignment with the world’s most powerful autocrats at full tilt.

Using calls for political violence scarcely different to those issued by Adolf Hitler in the 1930s, Trump might have finally begun to convince more moderate Republicans that their grievances about the economy and misgivings about US President Joe Biden’s age are not worth transforming the United States into what Germany became before World War II.

As an aside, we should be wondering when the US lawmakers who have made opposition to Communist-Party-style autocracy their political livelihoods will finally call Trump out. The answer is not until Haley manages to close the polling gap with the front-runner.

How the Republican civil war ends is anyone’s guess. Trump is firing up the most bloodthirsty members of his sizeable base, folks for whom DeSantis isn’t a saviour despite the culture war he is waging against immigrants, the LGBTQ community and anyone trying to teach the history of slavery in the US.

By letting fly with rhetoric that would have been unthinkable in American political discourse, Trump has turned the man once thought of as his top competitor into a poser in hidden heels. What remains to be seen is whether the tactic that has undercut DeSantis’s support among far-right Republicans will continue to boost Haley.

Biden himself might have assisted in the possible demise of Trump’s easy path to the White House with a barb aimed not at his predecessor but at President Xi Jinping. When pushed by a reporter on whether he still thought Xi was a dictator, Biden said he did. It was the one sour note after the summit with Xi at the Apec forum in San Francisco.

Biden has much going against him as the 2024 election season draws closer. But on the foreign policy front, his positions are difficult for Trump or his party to assail: unwavering support for Israel, leading an international coalition to prevent Russia from swallowing Ukraine whole, and passing waves of new restrictions on technology trade with China which still allow businesses to operate in the world’s second-largest economy.

“Well Said, Mr President”, said James Freeman, the assistant editor of The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, shortly after the “dictator” comment. This is a forum that regularly excoriates Biden and chose to publish a letter from Trump alleging the 2020 election was “rigged” against him, the lie at the centre of his plans to turn the White House into a regime of retribution for a wrong that never occurred.

Biden might sometimes stumble on his words, but he’s clear on the existential threat facing the Western world. Having stood by his assertion that Xi is a dictator, Biden has solidified the ground he stands on going into the election when he portrays Trump as the same.