Sunday, July 7, 2024

Bw Reads: The election no one wants

Welcome to Bw Reads, our weekend newsletter featuring one great magazine story from Bloomberg Businessweek. After a week plus of Democratic

Welcome to Bw Reads, our weekend newsletter featuring one great magazine story from Bloomberg Businessweek. After a week plus of Democratic leaders debating whether President Joe Biden is their best bet to once again defeat Donald Trump, we look back to last November, when Joshua Green and Nancy Cook explained how American voters have been dreading the Biden and Trump election déjà vu all along. You can find the whole story online here.

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Call it the election no one wants.

With a year to go until Election Day, a record share of Americans hold unfavorable opinions of both major parties and take a dim view of the front-runners. Most voters say they don't want Joe Biden to be president. Or Donald Trump.

But anyone hoping for a better option is likely to wind up disappointed. Although voters and party leaders have doubts about both men, the same polls show Biden and Trump poised to coast to their party's nominations once the primaries begin in January. The last time an incumbent president lost, ran against the same opponent four years later and returned to the White House was in 1892, when Grover Cleveland faced off against Benjamin Harrison.

Americans aren't itching for a rerun. A recent Washington Post-ABC News poll found that only 37% approve of how Biden has handled his presidency, while only 38% approve of how Trump handled his. Half of respondents say both men are too old to serve another term. While nominees often pivot to the center for the general election, "you can't pivot younger," warns James Carville, who ran Bill Clinton's first presidential campaign.

Neither Biden nor Trump has ever held a lofty approval rating. But negative sentiment has grown. An NPR-Marist poll found that 65% of voters don't want Biden to be president again; 60% feel the same about Trump. About 1 in 6 voters (14%) don't want either man to win, a group strategists call "double haters." That's more than four times the number who disliked both Trump and Biden when they faced off in 2020—and more than enough to swing the 2024 election. "The question," says Doug Sosnik, a veteran Democratic strategist, "is who they'll support."

Photo illustration 731. Photo: Getty Images

Americans don't agree on much when it comes to politics. But a majority of Democrats (68%), Republicans (57%) and Independents (78%) do agree on one thing in the latest Harvard-Harris poll: Rather than Trump or Biden, they'd like "another choice."

Viable alternatives are scarce. Biden faces no serious challengers in the Democratic primary. Trump commands more support in Republican primary polls than all the other candidates combined, according to the latest FiveThirtyEight polling average. "It is not mathematically possible to be the GOP nominee unless you take away some of his support," says Terry Sullivan, campaign manager for Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio's 2016 White House run, "and no one has been able to do that." Several outsiders, including Cornel West, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Democratic Representative Dean Phillips of Minnesota, have announced campaigns, but it's not clear they'll even make it onto the ballot.

Like Bill Murray's bedraggled TV weatherman in Groundhog Day, doomed to repeat the same 24 hours over and over again, American voters are gradually coming to realize that unless something radical happens, they're in for a repeat of 2020. Even hardened partisans aren't thrilled by this prospect. For everyone else, a Trump-Biden rematch is about as welcome as a root canal. (A Biden campaign official says off-year polls aren't indicative of how people ultimately vote and added that polls are often incorrect. The Trump campaign didn't respond to requests for comment.)

Amy Walter, editor of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, often sits in on focus groups of Independent and undecided voters, many of whom long ago soured on the likely nominees and dread the prospect of voting for either. "There's substantial disappointment, even disbelief, that this is going to be the choice," she says. "Swing voters would rather eat a bowl of glass than have to choose between Trump and Biden again."

In a race that's so far held few surprises and little drama, the biggest question on the minds of these frustrated voters may be this one: How are two historically unpopular candidates poised to become their parties' presidential nominees without so much as a serious challenge?

Keep reading: Who's Ready for a Trump-Biden Rematch? Anyone? Hello?

Also, read Businessweek's latest cover story: The House of Arnault

More Bw Reads

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