From Iowa to Washington, this is an extraordinary week for America

This has been a momentous week for the United States. The opening shots in the presidential contest coincided with a State of the Union address by Donald Trump in which the usual niceties were conspicuously absent on both sides. The unprecedented polarisation of American politics has been further reinforced by the attempt to impeach the President in the Senate. The trial will end today, but his acquittal won’t end the deep divisions that brought the world’s greatest democracy to this sorry pass. 

The first Democratic primary in Iowa was a fiasco for the party organisation, which botched the count, but it produced a remarkable result for the fresh-faced centrist Pete Buttigieg. Of the several septuagenarian senators, the socialist Bernie Sanders vied with Buttigieg for first place, the progressive Elizabeth Warren also did well, but the former Vice President Joe Biden finished a disappointing fourth. 

The race will now be on to find a presidential candidate capable of taking on Trump in the “flyover states” where Democrats tend to do badly. As the first openly gay politician with a shot at the White House, Buttigieg will have an uphill task in evangelical states but will rely on his youth, his record as a war veteran and his relatively uncontroversial policies. Sanders has the opposite problem: he has no appeal to patriots, his health is precarious and his policies are extreme. Warren has yet to do anything to dispel her dour image as a second Hillary Clinton without the charm, but she is the darling of a party that has moved steadily into Left-wing identity politics while voters move in the opposite direction. Biden must do something fast to counteract his lacklustre performance so far, or he is finished.

The State of the Union is normally a bipartisan affair, but the Trump presidency has redefined what is normal in America. As tradition requires, the President handed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi a copy of his speech, but refused to shake her proffered hand. She in turn did not bother to conceal her contempt, tearing up the speech and tossing it onto her desk as soon as he had delivered it. Many Democrats jeered and heckled, some walked out and others refused to attend. Republicans responded by rewarding him with 118 ovations. Trump himself celebrated his most contentious act of the past year, taking out Qasem Soleimani, by lauding the family of an army staff sergeant killed in Iraq by one of the Iranian general’s roadside bombs.

Then, in the middle of these unseemly proceedings, the First Lady pulled off an extraordinary stunt: Melania Trump presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian honour, to Rush Limbaugh, the most shocking of shock jocks, days after he had announced his diagnosis with cancer. The Presidential Medal is “normally” awarded at a formal ceremony in the White House and the recipients, both Americans and in rare cases foreigners, are chosen for their outstanding achievements rather than their loyalty to the President. Only Trump could succeed in merging two of the most solemn events of the Washington DC calendar into a reality TV show. 

As for the content of Trump’s speech: to call it triumphalist would be an understatement. Unfortunately for the Democrats, not all the superlatives were superfluous. Despite defying economic orthodoxies, the economy really is booming, his foreign policy has yet to drag America into any new wars, and he has reduced illegal immigration. His tough talk — on trade wars, drugs wars or real wars — has brought results. And the vaporisation of Soleimani was a reminder that Trump’s bite is sometimes worse than his bark.

That leaves the impeachment. That too was a gamble, but one that hasn’t worked out well for the Democrats. Trump’s ratings are higher than ever and his acquittal will enable him to lay claim to an aura of innocence and even that of a victim of injustice. By staking everything on the obscure question of who said what to whom in Ukraine — a faraway country about which Americans know little and care less — the Democrats have given the President a free pass on other, perhaps murkier, aspects of his record.

The stage is set for an even more rumbustious election year than that of 2016. With Buttigieg auditioning for the role of a white Obama, while Sanders and Warren double down on the liberals’ lurch to the Left, the Democrats have yet to shake off their image as the party of the coastal establishment. Despite governing for four years, Trump still looks like the insurgent. At least a third of the population sees him as an abomination; another third adores his antics; the remaining third is busy trying to make a living. The winner in November will be the candidate who grabs the attention of the latter group. 

As things stand, the choice is between two forms of permanent revolution: Trump’s of the Right and the Democrats’ of the Left. If there is an opening for anyone, it will be someone capable of adapting to the new normal that Trump has created: the institutionalisation of the outsider as insider. Some still dream of a Michael Bloomberg or a Michelle Obama descending like a deus ex machina at the Milwaukee Democratic convention in July. It probably won’t happen; but unless it does, four more years of Trump beckon.