The Presidential Race That No One Wants

For as long as public polling on the 2024 presidential race has been available, it’s been clear that most Americans don’t want Trump vs. Biden II.

This week, though, the pure cavalcade of bad news and missteps from both candidates is reminding them why, underscoring the manifest weaknesses and limitations of the two likely presidential nominees and puncturing the idea that either is on any sort of glide path to victory.

There is Donald Trump, who immediately upon seizing the lead against Joe Biden in poll after presidential poll, reached back to the Third Reich for material for his stump speech. In recent weeks, the former president had finally deprived his GOP primary foes of their most potent argument against him — suddenly, the bulk of polling suggested he could defeat Biden. This week, however, Trump’s returned to familiar form, fending off allegations that he’s paraphrasing Hitler and forcing Republicans to answer for his remarks. Loudly insisting “I never read Mein Kampf” is no recipe for winning back suburban moms.

Biden isn’t alarming his party with his rhetoric. Rather, it’s the seeming lack of response to his diminished political position. For months, he’s insisted everything is fine and preached calm. “You’re reading the wrong polls,” he insisted to reporters on Sunday. But he remains in a nosedive, with no signs of pulling up.

Monmouth University polling released Monday has Biden sitting at 34 percent approval — his worst job rating ever from the polling shop. And in head-to-head, swing-state matchups with Trump, he’s consistently behind. Biden’s approval rating at this point in his term is the worst of any president at the same point since reputable national polling became available according to FiveThirtyEight, which tracks the stat back to 1945. No incumbent president has come back from such a hole to victory in the modern political era — and the White House doesn’t have a convincing message to panicked Democrats about why they shouldn’t be sweating.

Biden’s great fortune appears to be his opponent. Trump’s legal troubles have come roaring back after simmering in the background. On Tuesday, the Colorado high court ruled that Trump is ineligible to run again for president — and thus won’t appear on the state’s ballot — because of his role in stoking an insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021.

The ruling is likely to force the Supreme Court to resolve whether he can hold future public office, adding yet another question for the court to decide, in addition to Special Counsel Jack Smith’s request to the Supreme Court last week that they decide on Trump’s claim that he’s immune to prosecution for charges related to his bid to subvert the 2020 election.

But even if the Supreme Court rules in Trump’s favor in one or both of the cases that might be before them, his potential legal liabilities remain a black box that could easily sink his chances. Trump is going to spend much of 2024 in court — his first criminal trial is set to begin in March (though appeals could push back that date), right around when he hopes to wrap up the Republican nomination.

Primary voters haven’t seemed to mind Trump’s legal woes, but it’s an open question as to how many Americans will respond when they’re confronted with potential criminal convictions; some of them might remember why they soured on him or held their nose and voted for Biden in the first place.

If they’ve forgotten, Trump has provided fresh evidence to the Republican Party of his capriciousness as a leader and his willingness to blow up the party on a whim. Just this week, Trump called for a primary challenge to Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), a conservative lawmaker who’s supporting Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Nevermind that the Texas filing deadline has passed already.

And from the man who brought you Doug Mastriano, Herschel Walker and Blake Masters, here’s Bernie Moreno: a former car dealer who’s never held elected office and is focused on “fighting the Deep State” in his run for Senate in Ohio. Moreno, who secured Trump’s official announcement on Tuesday, is locked in a tight primary battle with Ohio state Sen. Matt Dolan and Secretary of State Frank LaRose. A November poll from Emerson College has Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) leading Moreno by 11 points, while only beating LaRose by five and Dolan by three.

While Biden avoids the wrecking ball approach to his party, he confronts persistent, nagging problems that he hasn’t been able to knock down — among them, that he’s been an ineffective steward of the economy.

Polls report Americans continue to have a grim outlook of the economy — regardless of the actual state of the economy — despite Biden’s best efforts. And on Monday, the president discovered the limits of his embrace of industrial policy. U.S. Steel agreed on Monday to a full cash sale to Japan’s Nippon Steel worth $14.9 billion. The agreement has Rust Belt Democrats running for reelection — including Ohio’s Brown and Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania — apoplectic, while Republicans pile on. It also takes some real air out of Biden’s carefully constructed self-image as a manufacturing whisperer who can protect American jobs, an essential part of his pitch to voters in key Midwestern swing states.

Add to that Biden’s political vulnerability on border security — voters vastly prefer Trump to Biden on immigration issues — where the president is resting his hopes on an elusive bipartisan immigration deal. Again, this week provided another cold shower: After weeks of bargaining to wrap the issue up before the holidays, any lasting hopes of an agreement fell apart on Tuesday as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell issued a joint statement that they’re “committed” to getting something done in the new year.

Even if Biden can get a deal through, he’ll assuredly have to swallow concessions that will infuriate much of his party. As Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.) told POLITICO, “I’m an absolute no on any bill that’s going to change asylum status or remove parole.”

It’s a needle that might just be impossible to thread. Look at France, which passed a hardline immigration bill this week that has far-right leader Marine Le Pen claiming “ideological victory” and centrist President Emmanuel Macron’s party in total chaos. With the left — and in particular, young progressive voters — already threatening to abandon Biden in droves due to his support of Israel’s incursion into Gaza, a rightward lurch on immigration could drive these voters into the hands of a third-party candidate or to their couches next November.

Together, the recent run of show may have provided a revealing glance at what’s to come: a campaign that can’t gain momentum between candidates Americans don’t want.