Hail to the Champs
Joe Biden: Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America (source: Joe Biden); User:TDKR Chicago 101 (clipping)Donald Trump: Shealah Craighead (source: White House)Сombination: krassotkin, CC BY-SA 2.0
It’s official. The rematch that nobody wanted is going to happen.
No, that’s not true.
The rematch is going to happen, but people definitely wanted it despite protestations to the contrary. In large part, Trump supporters wanted it. Republicans passed over a number of better-qualified candidates with less baggage. Republicans clearly want Trump.
The matter isn’t as clear cut for Democrats. Biden remains unpopular, but incumbent presidents are hard to beat in a party primary That’s especially true when no one challenges them. Well, no one with a shot at winning anyway.
Personally, I’d say that Biden remaining in the race is a blessing in disguise. Consider who the Democratic nominee might be if Biden hadn’t run for reelection. Kamala Harris? Gavin Newsom? My suspicion is that any non-Biden candidate would be much further to the left than the incumbent.
Even though Trump currently leads in the polls, I will predict today that the situation reverses by Election Day and Biden wins a second term. There are a few reasons for this aside from my inherent anti-Trump leanings.
First, Biden already has a healthy fundraising advantage. The Biden campaign has far more cash on hand than Trump and that’s unlikely to change. A few days ago, Trump allies took control of the RNC and engaged in a massive purge of staffers. The late changes to Republican infrastructure don’t bode well for increasing cash flow in the late stages of the campaign, and that’s not even considering the possibility that the RNC will shift money to Trump’s legal bills rather than funding campaigns for The Former Guy and down ballot races.
By November, Biden and Democrats might well be dominating the airwaves. It could get ugly for Republicans up and down the ticket.
Second, one reason Biden is polling poorly is that Democrats think he’s too moderate. A lot of discontent on the left comes from those who prefer a more liberal candidate. These people are likely to come back into the fold before the election because no one unites Democrats like Donald Trump.
The same goes for sympathizers of Palestine. Many of these people are hesitant to vote Biden because of his support for Israel. These people may not vote Biden, but they definitely aren’t going to vote Trump. The best hope for Republicans is that they and other progressives stay home.
That’s unlikely because Donald Trump is Biden’s best campaigner. The Former Guy can’t shut up and he can’t not be crazy. So far, his zaniness and malevolence is ramped up in 2024 over previous years. It’s going to get worse.
At the same time, Trump is dividing his own party. A great many Republicans won’t vote for Trump again. This happened in the past when Trump underperformed other Republicans on the same ballot and it it will happen again. Driving voters out of the party is no way to win.
Michael Medved, my favorite conservative radio talker, used to say that voters tend to reject crazy, scary candidates. That rule of thumb often holds true unless a candidate forgets to campaign in the Rust Belt or makes similar errors.
The moderate and independent voters who will decide the election aren’t paying attention yet, but they will. As the election nears and people start listening to Trump, Biden will sound better and better.
The election isn’t over. We’ve barely started, but the die is cast. I won’t say Trump can’t win, but Republicans have an uphill struggle due to the choice to run a deeply flawed, unpopular candidate with tons of baggage.
My hope is that the Republican Party will see the lesson in the loss and reverse course away from Trumpism rather than resort to violence again. The odds for for that are long so the best hope for conservatives may be to attempt to influence the Democratic Party to move toward the center. Either way, it’s going to be a long eight months until the election and a long four years.
“The moderate and independent voters who will decide the election aren’t paying attention yet, but they will. As the election nears and people start listening to Trump, Biden will sound better and better.”
Ojala que, amigo. Ojala que. Because right now, Trump is leading in the polls by about 1.5% among likely voters (see page 6). And that’s kind of scary because anyone who’s paying a bit of attention or has a memory that includes J6 can see who and what Donald Trump really is, even if a handful of judges, politicians, and pundits publicly pretend not to.Report
Let the dementia derby begin!
Every election is a garbage buffet, but this one has nothing on offer but toxic waste.
I am deeply disappointed in everyone who, after four years of each of these jackasses, said “Four more years” to either of them.Report
I think it would be good to institute (as an informal rule at least) that no one over 65 should be nominated for their first term as President, having someone that old in such a high pressure office is just too risky.Report
Parties don’t chuck incumbents. This is a known trend.
And the GOP has fully become the Trump Cult. Because they want all the marbles to themselves and he says he will give them the marbles in exchange for letting him rule indefinitely.
You can be as disappointed as you want in this, but I’m guessing on Primary Day you didn’t vote to stop this from happening, and you won’t on election day either.Report
Americans love sequels and “reboots” too dang much.Report
I can’t tell if we love them or if they are the path of least resistance, so much so that it’s all we end up getting served. It reminds me of road trips when I was a kid, where no matter what you want you still somehow end up eating at Shoneys three or four days in a row.Report
It is partly what we get served, and partly the path of least resistance. And in this case I’m ok with what I’m getting served. I still believe Democrats can and should move back more left then the centrists they are now, but they are still willing to mostly protect people and communities I care about, and keep moving forward on important environmental issues. Biden may be no leftist, but he’s only a minimal threat.
Trump – not so much.Report
I am voting for Biden as maybe the last normal politician, so slightly different reasons. Perhaps in the fall I will do an update to the endorsement post I did for him in 2020, which I think held up pretty well.
https://ordinary-times.com/2020/10/27/the-curmudgeons-case-for-biden/Report
yeah, I think is is a combination of “path of least resistance” and sometimes “better the devil you know” (except in this case? One of the two candidates that I know, I already lived through four chaotic and upsetting years with him at the helm and very much hope he doesn’t get another bite of the apple, though it sometimes eels like a lot of my fellow citizens are up for another round of “watching it all burn”)
that said, there seem to be precious few up-and-coming folks that I could enthusiastically vote forReport
I could support Gavin Newsome. Kamala Harris. Maybe Jay Inslee.Report
I think that if Biden was free to pass on his baton to whoever he chose, he would chose Mayor Pete.
But he isn’t free, and he will have to endorse Kamala.
In a Kamala Harris – Pete Buttigieg primary, I’m team Mayor Pete through and through (and so are my energy company executives colleagues; at least those that will vote D).Report
A couple of months ago, I thought this election was the most fundamentally unpredictable thing I’d ever seen or ever likely to see. That’s still true to some extent but still, it’s a lot clearer now than it was then.
As things stand, the Demos theory of the case has been repudiated pretty clearly (not really something I expected to happen but it did). You want to vote over inflation, border security, or lockdowns? Too bad, those are normal issues but now it’s all about keeping democracy in America so you have to vote Demo whaddyagonnadoo?
The voters ain’t having that, and for that matter the Demo partisans haven’t even really tried to argue the case as much as assert it, something the OP should bear in mind more than he does. Among other things this line of argument runs up against the perception of the first Trump Administration in the minds of Americans, which is much different than libs imagine it to be.
Trump has been running ahead of Biden in the polls for a while, but now the vibes are cutting Trump’s way as well, consistent with the polls. It’s become clear that Trump has been the victim of malicious prosecution in many if not all of the cases against him.
It’s also become clear that President Biden’s lack of energy and engagement are real, to the point where it’s hurting the President among libs as well as conservatives. Special prosecutor Robert Hur basically called the President an incoherent deluded old man, in the nicest lawyerly way he could.
Having said all this, strictly in horse-race terms I’d still rather be Biden than Trump. Lots of people agree with Trump about this or that. Some of those even support Trump. But it’s big hurdle to get people to actually _empower_ Trump, over the nuclear launch codes, the Secret Service, the DOJ, his Twitter account, etc.
For a typical American who disapproves of President Biden, it’s much easier to tell a pollster that you’re going to vote for the other guy and much harder to actually pull the lever for Trump from the voting booth.Report