The 2024 election rematch Americans are dreading looks likely
It is looking increasingly likely America will have to choose between Donald Trump and Joe Biden yet again when it comes time to vote next year.
A year before the 2024 election, a divided nation is stuck in a political loop: President Trump’s weaknesses helped deliver President Biden to the White House, and now the incumbent’s vulnerabilities could lead his predecessor to a comeback.
Biden, the nation’s oldest president at age 80, is poised to reclaim the party’s nomination, yet he has been dogged with questions about his age, frustration over his handling of the economy and anxiety about two wars. Trump, 77, has a comfortable lead as he seeks the Republican nomination for a third time, even as many moderate and independent voters are repelled by his repeated efforts to overturn the 2020 elections results and the many criminal indictments he faces.
The two are likely headed for a general election rematch that will unfold against a backdrop of discontent, pitting two unpopular candidates against each other on inflation, abortion and America’s role in an unstable world. Given the narrowly divided electorate, the outcome will hinge on a small slice of voters spread across a half dozen or so states, with the possibility of multiple independent or third-party candidates scrambling the results.
Rep. Don Bacon, a Nebraska Republican who represents a closely divided Omaha-based district, said he believed that in 2020, “a lot of people didn’t vote for Joe Biden, they voted for Donald Trump or against Donald Trump.” This time around, he said, “I think the same issues that challenged Trump in our district are still there. People don’t like the name-calling, they want order.” But he added: “The difference this time is people are unhappy with Joe Biden’s performance.” A poll released this past week from Quinnipiac University showed the two men essentially tied in a hypothetical matchup, with 47% of registered voters supporting Biden and 46% backing Trump. The perennial question is where independent voters, who are evenly split in the poll, land.
A series of polls released Sunday by the New York Times and Siena College showed Biden trailing Trump among registered voters in five of the six swing states they surveyed. The polls found voters said, by a wide margin, that Trump’s policies as president helped them more than Biden’s did, and that majorities in every demographic group thought Biden was “too old” to be president.
The race would be one for the history books -- the first rematch of major party nominees since the 1950s. If Biden and Trump again lead their party’s tickets, the contest would feature the nation’s oldest president against the nation’s second-oldest president. If Trump prevails, he would become the first former president to reclaim the White House since Grover Cleveland in 1892.
Many say this is a sequel they could do without.
“I feel very sad that that’s the best we can do,” said Cindy Roth, 64, a retired Republican from Morton, Pa., a state won by Trump in 2016 and Biden in 2020. “I would love to see younger people.” Trump’s 2020 fixation Even as he dominates the Republican field, Trump faces a number of hurdles as he looks to the general election. He continues to claim falsely that the 2020 election was stolen from him -- assertions he made to his supporters leading up to the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Polls show a majority of Republicans don’t view Biden’s election as legitimate, raising the prospect that the 2024 results could again be disputed. Yet polls and the results of the 2022 midterm elections -- in which several high-profile Trump-backed candidates lost -- indicate that many swing voters are tired of his claims about 2020.
“We’ve never had an election like this. We had the 2020 election and it never ended,” said Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt. “Usually the loser of the election goes away. That has never happened. Usually their supporters take some time and move on. That has never happened.” While Trump has a massive polling lead over the GOP field, he is trying to make his nomination inevitable. The former president has been taking constant shots at his two closest competitors, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley. His team is looking to score decisive wins in early Republican contests in Iowa and New Hampshire, hoping to lock up the nomination by “Super Tuesday” in early March, when more than a dozen states will hold contests.
DeSantis, who has heavily focused his campaign on the Jan. 15 Iowa caucuses, is expected to formally receive the endorsement of Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds at an event in Des Moines on Monday, according to a person familiar with the matter. The endorsement was first reported by NBC News and the Des Moines Register.
Trump’s campaign responded with a statement suggesting Reynolds has “begun her retirement tour early as she clearly does not have any ambition for higher office” after the endorsement. “Her endorsement will not make any difference in this race,” the statement said.
Trump’s allies have called for all other candidates to quit and unite behind him, as a show of party support against his onslaught of legal problems, which include a civil fraud trial and four criminal indictments. Charges against the former president include attempting to overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia, civil fraud in New York, his handling of classified documents in Florida and a federal trial in Washington, D.C., for election interference.
Trump will have to spend time in various courtrooms next year, away from the campaign trail, complicating his pitch to voters. For example, Trump faces a March 4 trial date -- the day before Super Tuesday -- in the federal case in Washington, D.C., over charges that he tried to overturn the 2020 election results.
Trump’s advisers want to remind people about the economy during his term, which reached historic milestones for jobs, income and stock prices until the Covid-19 pandemic hit in March 2020 and sent unemployment to historic highs. While they acknowledge Trump’s court cases are a drag on his time, they think Trump has a unique ability to turn out infrequent voters.
Nevada-based GOP strategist Zachary Moyle said many voters would see a rematch between Biden and Trump as one forcing them to pick “the lesser of two evils” and thus creating a turnout challenge for both parties.
Trump has also sought to target Biden’s age and fitness for office, mocking his walk and speaking style.
Charles Franklin, director of a state and national poll conducted by Marquette Law School in Milwaukee, said there has been a very deliberate -- and effective -- messaging strategy from Republicans almost from the moment Biden was elected that he’s too old for the job. “Every poll I’ve done that asks about age finds twice as many people saying Biden is too old than saying Trump is too old,” he said.
Biden’s age problem Biden will enter the general election with the backing of party leaders, but as surveys show a majority of voters, including large numbers of Democrats, urging him not to seek re-election. His age and calls for a new generation of leadership are at the heart of a long-shot primary challenge by Rep. Dean Phillips (D., Minn.), who filed for the New Hampshire ballot late last month.
Biden will need to reassemble the diverse coalition of voters that elected him in 2020 and make a proactive case that his first-term agenda has led the nation out of the Covid-19 pandemic into a strong economy.
Biden officials contend that the eventual Republican nominee will be forced to take unpopular positions on taxes, abortion, Social Security and Medicare in order to placate the party’s MAGA base. In particular, abortion access, which helped power Democratic victories in 2022 following the Supreme Court decision eliminating a constitutional right to abortion, could again prove energizing for Democrats and some women.
“No matter who emerges from the field, the toxicity of these positions will be difficult to overcome with the voters who will decide this election,” wrote Julie Chavez Rodriguez, Biden’s campaign manager, in a memo released Thursday.
Biden and Trump are expected to fight for the same battleground states that decided the 2020 election: Arizona, Michigan, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, all of which were won by Trump in 2016 and Biden in 2020. North Carolina and Nevada also are seen as competitive by both parties.
Biden and his allies started advertising far earlier than President Obama did when he was running for re-election in 2012, according to ad tracker AdImpact. Democrats started in April of this year, roughly nine months earlier than in the 2012 cycle, and their ads have so far played most frequently in Pennsylvania, Arizona and Georgia.
Biden’s team believes he will ultimately get credit for a string of legislative accomplishments, including a $1 trillion infrastructure measure and new laws promoting the development of semiconductors and climate projects, as well as the backing of voters who support abortion access. They argue concerns about Biden’s age will fade when voters are faced with a direct choice, and have highlighted Trump’s campaign gaffes, such as when he recently confused Sioux City, Iowa, with Sioux Falls, S.D.
Both sides acknowledge that voters’ mood on the economy will play a major role. While economic growth surged over the summer and hiring shot up in September, surveys show the public remains pessimistic about the current economic direction, which is likely due to ongoing pains of inflation or other factors.
“We recognize that people right now are anxious about the economy despite the good [economic] numbers from a macro perspective,” said Rep. Ro Khanna (D., Calif.). “To me, it has to be a choice election, not a ratification election.” Some Democrats are concerned that the White House effort to promote “Bidenomics” as a shorthand for his economic accomplishments has been unpersuasive, but Biden has stuck with it.
A third-party opening?
The Wall Street Journal
More Coverage
Biden sidelined as Israel reshapes Middle East
White House officials say they are closely co-ordinating on possible targets but have been blindsided repeatedly by Benjamin Netanyahu.
Chappell Roan is the biggest thing in pop right now. She’s not happy about it
When she put out her debut album last year, she was a cult act. Now, Chappell Roan publicly reckoning with a rapid rise to the top.