Trump v Biden 2 is on – can anything stop them?

There has been a great deal of speculation about other candidates replacing the two frontrunners in this year’s election. The past week has taught us that those thoughts are nothing more than fantasies, writes Andrew Feinberg

US President Joe Biden delivers his third State of the Union address as Vice President Kamala Harris and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson look on (Getty Images)

For much of the last year, a not insignificant portion of the American commentariat has entertained a succession of fantasies concerning the identities of the candidates voters will choose between when they select the next US president this November.

On the left, there’s been a long-running, well-funded, and to a significant extent delusional faction of activists, both political and legal, who’ve been labouring under the impression that the courts would find Donald Trump ineligible to serve as president and bar him from appearing on a general election ballot.

This mistaken belief has been expressed in a campaign of lawsuits in largely Democratic-leaning states to disqualify Mr Trump based on his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss and his support for the rioters who stormed the US Capitol in service of that goal on 6 January 2021, the day Congress met to certify his loss to President Joe Biden.