Unless Joe Biden drops out of the race — not likely, but certainly possible — the general election will be a replay of the 2020 presidential contest, but with a few consequential differences.
For one, in 2020, Donald Trump ran as an unpopular incumbent. This time around, it’s Joe Biden in the role of unpopular incumbent.
In 2020, Biden ran as the candidate who promised to restore normalcy to the presidency. But four years later, we have chaos on our southern border, inflation at the supermarket (and just about everyplace else), crime in big cities run by Democrats and a reluctance to punish criminals by progressive district attorneys, along with a war in Europe and another one in the Middle East.
So much for returning normalcy to the presidency.
Reelection campaigns generally favor the incumbent, but just about every recent poll tells us that what’s been true in the past may not hold up this time. Trump leads Biden in all of those polls — and is beating him in key battleground states, where presidential elections are won and lost.
So here’s what we have to look forward to: One candidate who tried to overturn the 2020 election and is now facing 91 felony counts, and another candidate who has given voters reason to question his capacity to serve four more years and whose approval ratings are among the lowest of any modern president seeking a second term.
Yes, in a country of more than 300 million Americans, we’ve wound up with two candidates that most Americans don’t like and don’t want to see as our next president. Yet here we are. Ain’t America great?
To win elections, a candidate needs the overwhelming support of his own party. So Donald Trump will have to figure out a way to win over voters who rejected him in the primaries and went for Nikki Haley. It won’t be easy.
When Haley dropped out Wednesday morning, she could have endorsed Trump — but didn’t. Instead, she said, “It is now up to Donald Trump to earn the votes of those in our party and beyond who did not support him. And I hope he does that. At its best, politics is about bringing people into your cause, not turning them away. And our conservative cause badly needs more people. This is now his time for choosing.”
She’s right, and any sensible candidate would take her advice. But if history is any guide, Trump is much more adept at dividing Americans than bringing them together. During the campaign, he called Haley a “birdbrain” and made fun of the dress she wore during his victory speech in New Hampshire. Not a good way to bring “people into your cause,” as Haley put it — or to convince women, a crucial voting bloc, that they should vote for you.
But Biden has his own problems trying to hang on to the coalition that helped elect him four years ago. If the polls are right, black voters are abandoning him. Same with Hispanic voters and younger voters. And Muslim voters may stay home on Election Day because they believe the president isn’t doing enough to protect Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
If Biden can’t find a way to put the coalition back together, he’ll have a tough time winning. And if Trump can’t win over independents who abandoned him four years ago, he’ll have a tough time winning.
Or to put it another way: Biden is probably the only candidate who can lose to Trump — and Trump is the only candidate who could lose to Biden. Once again: Ain’t America great?
To win, Biden needs to convince voters that even if they aren’t exactly enthusiastic about him, Trump is worse. And Trump pretty much has to convince voters that whatever they may think of him, Biden is worse.
This is what we’ll have to endure just about every day between now and Nov. 5 — a relentlessly ugly, relentlessly nasty, relentlessly negative campaign. It’s what the Wall Street Journal editorial board called “America’s great presidential unpopularity contest.”
One last time: Ain’t America great?
Bernard Goldberg is an Emmy and an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University award-winning writer and journalist. He was a correspondent with HBO’s “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel” for 22 years and previously worked as a reporter for CBS News and as an analyst for Fox News. He is the author of five books.