Voters likely will be stuck with a Biden, Trump rematch whether they like it or not.
Party activists in the Republican and Democratic parties want 2024 to be the first rematch between an incumbent president and his predecessor since Grover Cleveland defeated his successor Benjamin Harrison in 1892.
Cleveland prevailed over Harrison due to economic issues. Trump could look back to the 1892 election to remind voters of how things cost less when he was president.
“A Trump-Biden rematch would be a disaster for the country. I’m very depressed about it,” said Bobbie Kilberg, a prominent Republican donor who is supporting former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie told The Associated Press.
Trump Running Away With GOP Nomination
At this stretch, Trump is running away with the Republican nomination.
“There now seems to be a double inexorability as the campaign for next year’s presidential election gets seriously underway. On the one side, despite the most fervent ambitions of the Republican Never-Trumpers and anti-Trump independent voters, it is practically impossible to see anyone breaking his lock on the Republican nomination,” New York Sun columnist Conrad Black wrote. “The Democrats have no more indictments to conjure out of legal contortions and gymnastics and fictions and it should be possible for Mr. Trump’s lawyers to defer all these cases until after the election.”
Black continued, “The indictments will fade in their electoral significance other than as indicative of the corruption of the legal system and the temporary degeneration of the Democratic Party into a perennial dirty tricks operation, a monument to Saul Alinsky and not Jefferson, Madison, FDR, or JFK.”
The Real Clear Politics Average has Trump up 45 points over his nearest challenger Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, whose campaign has all but imploded. The Never Trump wing of the Republican Party is in denial of the trend.
Killberg called it “scary” that so many voters in her party continue to support the former president. ”I refuse to believe that Trump is our inevitable nominee.”
Biden Has Lock On Democratic Nomination
Joe Biden likewise has a definitive lock on the Democratic nomination; however, the challenge by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. underscored his weakness and vulnerability with voters.
A poll taken on August 31-September 1 found that Biden’s lock on the Democratic nomination had increased to 76% from 70% in April. This likely is the result of some of Kennedy’s comments that have made him look fringe.
“Kennedy and Williamson posted respective shares of 9% and 3% — record lows for their campaigns so far — though both figures were within the margins of error for our surveys testing the race. Kennedy’s decline could be the latest sign that as Democratic voters hear more of his iconoclastic pitch, the less they think of him. As my colleague, U.S. Politics Analyst Eli Yokley, noted earlier this summer, Kennedy’s popularity is trending up with Republicans and down with Democrats,” Morning Consult Pro writer Cameron Easley said.
Dueling Trials and Corruption
Trump faces 91 charges in four different criminal cases along with several civil suits going into 2024. Biden faces possible impeachment connected with an FBI informant’s claim that he took a bribe to get Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin fired.
The rematch is one that voters don’t want and will get anyway. It will come down to who is less unpopular. Currently, Trump seems to be slightly less unpopular than Biden and Democrats fear the weakness. That could be one of the impetuses for the 14th Amendment drive to knock Trump off the ballot.
His enemies worry they can’t stop as long as his name remains on the ballot. The 2024 election will be historic for all the wrong reasons. It should lead voters to look in the mirror and ask themselves what the fact is that Trump and Biden are the best they can produce. What do Trump and Biden say about the American electorate as a whole?
If it comes down to the economy and Biden’s age, then Trump could win due to reduced turnout caused by voters being sick of the spectacle. Trump would benefit from reduced turnout.
Nineteenth-century French philosopher Comte Joseph De Maistre rightly observed, “In a democracy people get the leaders they deserve.”
John Rossomando is a defense and counterterrorism analyst and served as Senior Analyst for Counterterrorism at The Investigative Project on Terrorism for eight years. His work has been featured in numerous publications such as The American Thinker, The National Interest, National Review Online, Daily Wire, Red Alert Politics, CNSNews.com, The Daily Caller, Human Events, Newsmax, The American Spectator, TownHall.com, and Crisis Magazine. He also served as senior managing editor of The Bulletin, a 100,000-circulation daily newspaper in Philadelphia, and received the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors first-place award for his reporting.
