Voters face off across three great divides in a Biden-trump rematch
At the top of the ballot on Election Day next fall, American voters will likely have to choose between President Biden and former president Donald Trump. That matchup isn’t inevitable, just very likely. Biden could still choose to step aside. A Republican could pull off an upset in the primaries, gain rivals’ endorsements as they drop out, and start surging. Stuff happens.
That’s why, when I hear predictions made with any certainty about the behavior of large numbers of people, I think of the long-ago tagline from the “Naked City” television show and movie: “There are 8 million stories in the Naked City.” There will be millions of stories behind each vote in the primaries, and maybe 150 million stories or more behind the votes cast in the 2024 election.
But if a Biden-trump rematch is indeed the marquee event, the outline of what will drive those stories has already become clear. The election is going to be marked by three great divides.
First: irascibility vs. infirmity. Some subset of voters are simply not up for another four years of Trump’s trademark combativeness online and in person.
But tens of millions of Americans love what they assess to be devil-may-care authenticity, and millions more view it as at best exhausting and at worst the modeling of cruelty as a means of communication.
Similarly, tens of millions of Americans have watched Biden visibly decline in energy, in activity and in the simple ability to sustain a thought with or without a teleprompter. They are not going to vote for what seems to them to be a hidden-hand presidency not actually run by the man elected to the office. But many millions of other Americans dismiss perceptions of Biden’s frailty and value his administration’s policies.
In this first deep divide, voters will have to choose between a former president spoiling to settle dozens of scores and an incumbent who might not be up for a second term.
A second chasm separates the starkly different approaches of Biden and Trump on issues of national security, especially regarding the use of force and the need to secure the nation’s borders.
Biden’s presidency was marked indelibly by the disastrous 2021 exit from Afghanistan.
Add in Vladimir Putin’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine and Hamas’s Oct. 7 barbaric rampage in Israel. And the collapse of anything resembling a secure border with Mexico. What do you get? Countless voters who will conclude that not just the United States but the entire West are too reluctant to firmly oppose the forces of chaos and totalitarianism. Yet other voters might welcome Biden’s approach to security matters, regarding it as a sign of measured, appropriate caution.
Trump’s unpredictability on national security presents a vivid contrast, but similarly appeals to many and frightens others. Some voters might not relish Biden’s long record of foreign policy miscues, but they worry more about Trump’s willingness to take huge risks, as with his ordering the drone strike in 2020 that killed top Iranian general Qasem Soleimani.
Those who applaud peacethrough-strength-and-the-occasional-big-whack have already penciled in Trump’s name for 2024. They are joined by those who insist on a border wall and every other tool at the country’s disposal to end migrants’ illegal U.S. entry by the millions annually.
Finally, the biggest divide is not between Trump and Biden but involves Trump alone and how voters view him.
Some believe that a second Trump term could spell the end of the republic as they know and love it. Others think he will save the country from out-of-touch elites.
Millions are convinced
Trump is a dictator in waiting. They are sincere. They think 2024 could be the nation’s last free election if Trump wins that this time, he will simply refuse to leave office. They might be unclear on exactly how that would work under a constitutional system, but they fret about it nonetheless. They would vote for anyone anyone not named Trump. Biden’s record is simply irrelevant to them.
But other millions of voters are either amused by the histrionics about Trump’s threat to democracy or genuinely offended by the idea that they would support a fascist dictator. This latter group perceives in the overclass’s repeated warnings about Trump not just irrational fears but also calculated diversions from real dangers to the country.
Those would include the slide in achievement and order in public schools, alarm over crime and chaos on the streets, and the spread of bureaucracies built on the grievance-fueled politics of “diversity, equity and inclusion.”
Expect these voters to compare the constant, hyperbolic attacks on the former president with elites’ resolute defense of Harvard’s president, Claudine Gay, against charges of moral incoherence and plagiarism. The perception of two standards one for the coastal elites and another for everyone else, especially Trump might supercharge these voters’ activism this election year. And millions who don’t share that view will be working just as hard, on the other side of the great divide.