A New York Times poll last week captured exactly what the 2024 election is going to be about, should the two nominees be President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump: a battle to see who is least unpopular.
Yes, an ideal world would not have the two seemingly least popular people as the choices for the public. But it would be a distortion of history to pretend this is not only common but in fact how the world normally works.
How many times have you heard someone say they lamented the choice “between the lesser of two evils”? Large swaths of voters have been complaining about their choices since voters had choices.
Now, however, the choice voters are likely to face is not between one known quantity and someone they have to take on faith. This time, it’s a choice between two people they know well and dislike. It will be the “Meh Election.”
There has never been another election like 2024 is shaping up to be — a decision between two candidates voters know better than any other politicians in the country. An incumbent president has faced off against a former President only twice in our history — Grover Cleveland in 1892 (won) and Teddy Roosevelt in 1912 (ran as a third-party candidate and lost).
Others have tried and failed. In 1940, Herbert Hoover mounted a longshot and ultimately failed attempt to win the Republican nomination. Gerald Ford considered accepting the Republican nomination for vice president in 1980, going so far as to enter discussions with the Ronald Reagan campaign about a co-presidency. Reagan instead chose George Bush as his running mate.
It serves to demonstrate just how difficult the path back to power is once you’ve lost it.
But most incumbent presidents aren’t as wildly unpopular as Joe Biden is.
And there’s the rub: The public doesn’t want either of these men, or at least the majority doesn’t. That New York Times poll has both men tied at 43 percent. It is not unusual that 14 percent haven’t taken sides at this early in such a hypothetical matchup. But usually voters do this because they want to see what the candidates have to say, to get the know them better. With Biden and Trump, everyone knows who they are. There’s no mystery left.
Unlike the election of 1892, when the former President Cleveland wiped the floor with sitting President Benjamin Harrison, there isn’t anyone in the country better-known or understood by the public than Biden and Trump. In 1892, there was no internet, no Twitter (or Truth Social). There weren’t cable networks covering every court proceeding breathlessly in real time, then blanketing the remaining time in any given 24-hour period with more discussion of the same.
Today, no Republican candidate can give an interview without at least half the questions being about Trump, his poll numbers and his various criminal cases. And if Trump says something edgy on social media that day, that is the only thing people will ask about.
When not talking Trump, the commentators are talking about Biden. Depending on the new outlet, they’re either spinning everything he’s doing as just short of godlike or the most horrific assault on the country since 9/11. Nuance, in both cases, is dead.
These two men are like a pillow smothering news, politics and anyone else vying for the presidency. But there isn’t really anyone left who is undecided about them. Everyone has made up their minds, and they don’t really like either of them.
Biden’s favorability rating is a net negative 14.3 percentage points in the RealClearPolitics average of polls. He is outdone by Trump, with a negative 18.6-point deficit. Biden’s unfavorable average is 54.4 percent and Trump’s is 57 percent.
There have never been two candidates less popular or more likely to become their respective parties’ nominees. How can that be?
They both have their fans. Trump loyalists aren’t even interested in policies, only him. And Biden fans are really only interested in the fact that they believe he’s the only Democrat who can beat Trump.
Biden faces no serious challenge for the Democratic nomination. (No, RFK Jr. doesn’t count.), and Trump has far too many challengers for the majority of the party to coalesce around any alternative.
If something doesn’t change the dynamic (and there’s plenty of time for that to happen), this will be the “Hold Your Nose” election where the choice comes down to the small slice of remaining swing voters casting their vote based on the thought of who makes them slightly less nauseous: The guy they don’t like, or the guy they hate.
Derek Hunter is host of the Derek Hunter Podcast and a former staffer for the late Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.).