Donald Trump won the 2016 election because he was seen as a plucky, unconventional underdog running against not just a face of the establishment, but arguably its most reviled representative.
Four years later, as an incumbent, Trump lost – in spite of his mostly impressive record in office. Some might chalk his defeat up to the pandemic, but that’s an oversimplification. Joe Biden is president not just because the economy and American life itself was rocked by Covid-19, but because the trials of the plague year accentuated his opponent’s countless personal flaws.
Trump is yet again challenging an unpopular status quo. Biden’s putrid performance in office as well as his advanced age and declining abilities have rendered him a rare incumbent underdog.
For months now, Trump has not only led Biden in national surveys (bear in mind that he decisively lost the popular vote in both of his prior White House bids) but in the key swing states that will determine who is sworn in for a second term in January 2025.
In 2020, Biden not only rebuilt the so-called “Blue Wall” in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, but broke through in traditionally red states such as Arizona and Georgia. Recent polling indicates that Trump is well-positioned to take back all of those and win in Nevada, where a Republican has not prevailed since George W. Bush.
Americans overwhelmingly think Biden is too old to carry on as commander-chief. They trust Trump more on the most important issues to them. And they even appear willing to forgive him for some of his most grievous sins. A recent Wall Street Journal survey of the aforementioned swing states found that Biden could boast only a one-point lead on the issue of “protecting democracy” despite Trump’s post-2020 election meltdown, for which he is now being criminally prosecuted in two jurisdictions.
Yet in spite of all of the signs suggesting that a Trump redux is increasingly inevitable, the truth is that it’s anything but. The short explanation for this reality check is simple: Trump 2024 can be better compared to Trump 2020 than Trump 2016.
By all accounts, the baggage-addled, soon-to-be 78-year-old former president Americans see on the campaign trail now more closely resembles the 74-year-old they remember from four years ago than the 70-year-old they first encountered four years before that.
This time, he’s waving even more red flags. Trump has trashed most of the talent the made up his first administration, including the formerly loyal vice-president he sicced a mob on; he’s floating trial balloons about suspending the Constitution; and he’s wrapped up in four criminal trials as well as a variety of civil proceedings, some of them in connection with alleged sexual abuse for which he has already been found liable.
These facts may not yet have destroyed his candidacy, but it’s difficult to imagine that it won’t impair it.
Because while it’s true that Trump locked up the Republican nomination awhile ago, the general election has not really begun in earnest. Americans are still more tuned into the issues (inflation, the wars in the Middle East and Europe, etc.) than they are the horse race between team red and team blue.
Naturally, this favours Trump, who presided over a much healthier economy and more stable world order than his nemesis.
Inflationary “Bidenomics”, the neglect of the southern border, and the wrongheaded, submissive foreign policy championed by the president and the failed Obama-era retreads he’s reemployed have wreaked havoc. Biden is feeling the political consequences of his failures right now, and deservedly so.
But elections are about more than issues, and as November’s draws nearer, that will become increasingly clear. Trump will command more Americans’ attention more often. Moreover, it appears that he has no intention whatsoever of tempering his rhetoric in the interest of making himself more palatable.
In recent weeks, he’s championed the cause of the “J6 Praying Grandma” and the other “hostages” he himself sent to the Capitol Building back in 2021, lied about speaking to the family of a woman murdered by a DACA beneficiary, and hawked Bibles just before Easter in a particularly gauche cash grab.
As Americans bear witness to more and more of these absurdities, the race is sure to tighten. Trump may have an advantage on substance, but it is a certainty that he lacks the discipline necessary to capitalise fully on that advantage and quite possible that he is lacking enough in that department to blow it entirely.
Worst of all for the presumptive Republican nominee, he is not some new figure voters can project their hopes onto while hand-waving away the lunacy. His antics are no longer a bizarrely refreshing taste of something new, they’ve become a part of America’s stale political culture.
This time around, Trump’s act is both more tired and threatening than it ever has been before, and that – more than anything else – is what should keep those hoping that the 45th president reprises his old role as the 47th from prematurely popping any champagne.
