All bets are off in a Biden-Trump rematch

Americans face a choice between two incumbent presidents. The idea might sound oxymoronic, a political version of the Pauli exclusion principle in physics, whereby two particles cannot occupy the same space at once. That is precisely the situation barring an act of God or the Obamas, in which we find ourselves. There hasn’t been a two incumbent election between the major parties since 1892. That year, Republican president William Henry Harrison faced the man whom he had defeated four years earlier, Democrat Grover Cleveland, in 1892. Cleveland won. At present he is the loan president who has served non consecutive terms in 2024. Donald Trump wants to play Cleveland to President Joe Biden’s Harrison Trump, like Cleveland won more votes losing in 2020 than he did winning in 2016. Trump also leads a party whose geographic base is the south. Trump also has five children. Yet the similarities and their the precedent of 1892 is so distant that it hardly seems relevant. Our two incumbent election is a novelty. It’s a twice impeached criminally charged Republican against a deeply unpopular Democrat who faces his own impeachment inquiry and whose adult son is under federal indictment. All this is set against the backdrop of collapsing public trust, deteriorating world order, resurgent anti semitism, the interpenetration of the judicial system with domestic elections, myriad connections between former and current national security personnel in the major media echo chamber, America’s aggressive and cunning strategic adversaries, the legitimation of political violence and a likelihood of constitutional crisis and domestic unrest. Harrison Cleveland was placid by comparison, even boring. If this were a one and commit race that pitted Biden against a fresh Republican Biden would be on his way to defeat he begins 2024 with the lowest approval ratings of any modern president. voters say that he is too old for the job that things are out of control, and that he has made their lives worse. The Biden campaign had spent 10s of millions of dollars in television advertising across swing states to counter these negative attitudes. The ads have had no effect. On the contrary, Biden’s position has worsened core democratic constituencies, Hispanic voters, black voters and 18 to 35 year old voters have turned against him. And yet Biden has a chance. The Democratic coalition may be fracturing but its pieces are not joining the GOP. Instead, disaffected Democrats are saying that they might stay home or that they might support a third party candidate. Normally, a splintered electorate and a collapse and enthusiasm for the incumbent benefits a challenger but not when the challenger is another incumbent, not when that other incumbent is Donald Trump. The former president may be ahead, but his lead is narrow and within the margin of error. pollster Bill McIntyre found that unlike recent presidential contests 2024 will be more about the Challenger than the incumbent in 2004 61% of voters said their votes were more about George W. Bush than John Kerry in 2012 66% said their votes were more about Barack Obama than Mitt Romney. The 2020 election was of course more about Trump than about Biden, who was in his basement. But 57% of voters say their vote in 2024 will be more about Trump than about President Biden. That is why Biden and the Democrats plan to campaign just as they have in every election since 2016, portraying Trump in the Magga movement as extremists bent on depriving the electorate of benefits from guaranteed health insurance to abortion rights. It’s worked before in 2018 2020 and 2022 will work again. Don’t look at me. I’m buying gold and Mr. E’s because in a two incumbent election, nothing is guaranteed.