The truth is that every Presidential candidate short of George Washington has their strengths and weaknesses, and in this particular election both of the candidates are older than most would like, but otherwise, the differences between these two disparate men end there.
It’s an often repeated refrain: A rematch between current President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump is the race that no one wants. Shortly after President Trump trounced his only remaining opponent on Super Tuesday, USA Today reported on “Biden vs. Trump, the rematch no one wanted. What’s different this time.” In January, Reuters put this way, “Trump vs. Biden: The rematch many Americans don’t want,” citing a recent poll that found “Seventy percent of respondents – including about half of Democrats – agreed with a statement that Biden should not seek re-election. Fifty-six percent of people responding to the poll said Trump should not run, including about a third of Republicans.” Late last year, Politico declared it “The presidential race 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 v. 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.” Like so much of what passes for conventional wisdom these days, this framing is only partially accurate, reflecting their own fears about President Biden’s viability in what will be the longest Presidential Election in United States history, rather than reality. The truth is that every Presidential candidate short of George Washington has their strengths and weaknesses, and in this particular election both of the candidates are older than most would like, but otherwise, the differences between these two disparate men end there.
Even a cursory look beneath the surface of these and other polls reveals that President Trump’s voters are far, far more excited about his candidacy than Biden’s. For example, a recent New York Times/Sienna College poll found that a full 97% of those who voted for President Trump in 2020 plan to vote for him again in 2024. In comparison, only 83% of President Biden’s voters said the same. While we can assume a reasonable percentage of those disaffected voters will return to the fold, the difference reflects a huge enthusiasm gap. This is also seen in recent polling from USA Today/Suffolk. This survey asked Republican and Democrat primary voters to rate their level of enthusiasm for their respective candidates, assuming Trump and Biden would ultimately be the nominees. Forty four percent of Republicans gave President Trump a 10 rating, representing the most enthusiastic. Only 18% of Biden voters said the same, and nearly half rated him 6 or lower. Similarly, an AP-NORC poll in December found that 65% of Republicans were “very” or “somewhat” satisfied with Trump, compared with 49 percent of Democrats with Biden. Interestingly, this poll also found a significant gap with independents. Last September, a Monmouth University Poll found the same, with 47% of Republicans “very enthusiastic” about Trump compared to a mere 29% of Democrats who were “very enthusiastic” about Biden. An NBC News poll in November asked the question in a different way: Is a vote for President Biden actually a vote for him or a vote against Trump? More than twice as many Biden voters said it was against Trump than for the actual candidate, 63 percent to 31 percent. The Washington Post described those results, “That’s a brand of negative partisanship we simply haven’t seen in the 21st century. In NBC polls dating to 2004, the lowest percentage to say they were mostly affirmatively voting for their party’s nominee was 35 percent in mid-2012. It was 36 percent for Biden in his 2020 matchup with Trump in an August 2020 NBC poll.” They continued to point out that there is an enthusiasm gap simply for voting in general. Sixty percent of Republicans were “very enthusiastic” to cast their vote in 2024 compared to 38 percent of Democrats.
This is undoubtedly why President Trump is currently leading in head to head matchups, and races with multiple independent candidates, both on a national level and particularly in the swing states that are likely to decide the election. Nationally, Trump leads Biden by around two points in a direct contest according to the latest Real Clear Politics average, a complete turn around from the numbers in 2020, where he only led a handful of polls throughout the entire race. If multiple candidates are on the ballot, that lead increases to almost three. The battleground states currently show the former President with even more support, an average lead of over 4 points. Currently, President Biden only leads in the average in Pennsylvania, and that lead is at least partially based on polls taken in January. Otherwise, President Trump leads in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, and Wisconsin. Every state except North Carolina went for President Biden in 2020. CNN’s Harry Enten summarized the state of the current race compared to the previous one last weekend, “All those results were officially within the margin of error, but put together they paint a picture of a troubled incumbent. It’s not just that Biden is in worse shape against his general election opponent than almost any incumbent in the past 75 years (save Trump in 2020). It’s that a lead of any margin for Trump was unheard of during the 2020 campaign – not a single poll that met CNN’s standards for publication showed Trump leading Biden nationally. And in that 2020 race, the states that put Biden over the top in the Electoral College (Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin) were each decided by less than a point. He had very little margin for error. The state of polling today looks worse for Biden.” Many prognosticators have blamed this turn around on concerns over President Biden’s advanced age and obvious mental decline. After all, he’s the oldest President in history, and the only one to be deemed unfit to stand trial by his own Department of Justice. Last month, ABC News/Ipsos found that a whopping 86% of Americans believe he is too old to serve another term compared to 62% who say the same for former President Trump. These concerns have only increased over time, up from 74% last September.
Whatever the case, the President and his team are taking these numbers seriously, as evidenced by his bizarrely energetic performance at last week’s State of the Union Address, what has been described as a “fiery speech” by the usual suspects. As CNN’s Stephen Collinson rather glowingly and wishfully reported in the aftermath, “This version of Joe Biden could beat Donald Trump. At the State of the Union address on Thursday night, the 81-year-old president set out to defuse his biggest liability: deep-seated fears among millions of Americans that he’s too old to serve a second term. There is nothing worse for a president than looking weak. So every word, gesture, joke and admonition of Biden’s appearance was geared toward the goal of making him look strong. And in the most important moment of the 2024 election campaign so far, Biden appeared to succeed. He projected vigor and forcefulness.” As he continued, Mr. Collinson chose a word few would ever associated with the President to describe his voice, “sonorant,” and insisted “Biden was a trenchant master of the chamber of the House of Representatives, effectively wielding the theatrics of the presidency and commanding an hour of unfiltered primetime television. At times, Biden reanimated the scrappy, twinkle-eyed, blue-collar street politician that has characterized his public image for decades — for instance, when he used the word ‘illegal’ instead of the more politically correct term ‘undocumented migrant.’” This was the spin for the next day or so, at least, until President Biden’s obvious weakness re-asserted itself for all to see. At the speech itself, he could not properly pronounce the young woman who was killed by an “illegal,” twice referring to her has “Lincoln” rather than “Laken,” dodged his obvious role in her death by saying thousands of Americans die every day anyway in his America, and then almost immediately apologized to the progressive wing of his party for using the term “illegal” in the first place. “During your response to [Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s] heckling of you, you used the word ‘illegal’ when talking about the man who allegedly killed Laken Riley,” MSBNC’s Jonathan Capehart prompted him this weekend. “An undocumented person. And I shouldn’t have used ‘illegal.’ It’s ‘undocumented,’” the President clarified. “So you regret using that word?” “Yes,” Biden replied, completely and totally undercutting the notion that he is strong in any sense of the word. If one cannot declare a person who committed a heinous murder “illegal” and stick to it for at least a week in the face of mild pushback from the far left of your own party, there is not much else that can be said except the weakness is endemic.
Fortunately or unfortunately depending on your political preferences, voters are not as easily fooled as propagandists like Mr. Collinson, given age alone is far from their only concern when it comes to President Biden. Last month, Gallup found that “Biden registers subpar approval ratings for his handling of five key issues facing the U.S., including a new low of 28% for immigration and readings ranging from 30% to 40% for the situation in the Middle East between Israel and Hamas, foreign affairs, the economy and the situation in Ukraine.” The numbers are staggering: Only 40% approve of his handling of Ukraine, 36% the economy, 33% foreign affairs in general, 30% the Middle East in particular, and 28% immigration. Just yesterday, Gallup found that only 37% believe President Biden is respected by world leaders. The share of Americans who claimed they were satisfied with our position in the world dropped to 33%. Age alone doesn’t explain this, but weakness combined with incompetence that cannot be erased by a single speech does. The focus on age and the idea that American voters in general are dissatisfied with the candidates serves to prevent the mainstream media from acknowledging that President Biden has never been who they claimed. He was a perennial also ran in presidential politics, with a unique ability to “fuck things up” according to his former boss, Barack Obama, who’s never been right about any foreign policy decision in his life according to his former colleague, Robert Gates. No one has ever liked him. In 2019 and 2020, Democrats trotted out a series of candidates who were said to be superior (does anyone remember Michael Bloomberg?), only to choose Biden out of desperation. The entire country has been paying for that desperation since he got into office, and voters are beginning to realize they were lied to about the President and his plans.
President Trump, meanwhile, trounced his competition in 2016 and again this year. He was affirmatively chosen by his party while rewriting the party platform in real time, creating the most powerful new political movement in decades and upending conventional wisdom in the process. He will always be a controversial figure, but the reality is that he remains revered in conservative and populist circles, and rightfully so in my opinion. This is why the vast majority of his supporters are excited beyond reason to vote for him a third time, and many of those who report their dissatisfaction with his candidacy have always been dissatisfied with him. Attempting to conflate President Trump’s position in his own party with Biden’s in his, or even with the general public, is merely more wishful thinking. The two are not the same, and the mainstream media is hopefully about to learn a valuable lesson in that regard in November.
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 