It will not be Joe Biden that will beat Trump: Donald Trump is the cause of his own demise.

His unmistakable “authenticity”, an asset that distinguished him from his political competitors in the past, is now a liability. His notorious claim of invincibility – that he could “shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and still get elected” – no longer holds weight today.

In 2016, Trump received a sizeable vote from Americans who voted for him not so much because they believed in him, but because they did not like Hilary Clinton. That dynamic will no longer be at work this coming November.

I cannot give you a fancy formula, but I do know this from American history: US voters have a habit of being punitive to leaders who govern when the country is in distress. I was a high school student in MacLean, Virginia, in the late 1970s and I remember, like many Americans then, admiring the incumbent president Jimmy Carter. He projected an aura of decency, humility and goodwill — much more so than Trump does today.

But America back then was in a big mess: the energy crisis, the Iran hostage debacle, the so-called “national malaise”. President Carter failed to get a second term; the American voters decided to give his opponent – Ronald Reagan – a chance.

This happened again to another one-term president who succeeded Reagan: the decent person of George HW Bush. He led a glorious international coalition to oust Saddam Hussein’s army from Kuwait, and for a while he looked sure to win a second term. But domestically the US economy was not in good shape and the unhappy American voters, again, punished President George HW Bush by denying him a second term.

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