Politics is the one area of life where everyone speaks like they’re soothsayers. Most people get their declarations of the future wildly wrong, and there are almost no consequences for any of it.
But politics is not consequence-free, at least not in its results. Who wins matters, a lot. Often, the winner is a foregone conclusion. Incumbents are nearly impossible to defeat.
But 2024 is an exception; it’s a year when the winner of the big prize — the presidency — could be either candidate. It’s the rare election where how the leading candidates run will be more important than who they are.
This is the sixth time we’ve had a presidential campaign rematch — precedents include Jefferson vs. Adams (1796 and 1800), Adams vs. Jackson (1824 and 1828), Van Buren vs. Harrison (1836 and 1840), Cleveland vs. Harrison (1888 and 1892), McKinley vs. Bryan (1896 and 1900), and Eisenhower vs. Stevenson (1952 and 1956).
This is, however, the first time since 1892 that a “best of 3” will be decided, with an incumbent facing off against the incumbent he previously defeated. Moreover, it will be a race where both leading candidates are quite possibly the best-known candidates in the country.
Name recognition for Donald Trump and Joe Biden is 99.999 percent. If you have been sober at any point in the last eight years, you know who they both are, and you probably already have a strong opinion of both.
That opinion-saturation will be an obstacle for both men, with both inspiring unambiguously negative emotions in large percentages of the population. However, Trump has an advantage here, in that there is also a large amount of passion for him that you simply do not see for Biden.
Democrats seem more inspired to vote against Donald Trump than they are for Joe Biden. That is why liberals are working so hard to stir up paranoia and fear of Trump and his supporters. Cable television is replete with fever dreams about “threats to democracy” and a need to “deprogram” people who simply are not interested in toeing the Democrats’ line.
Trump does not need to convince those people to vote for him, but he does need to overcome that strain of Democratic Party messaging, which is ever-present in the culture. Among many on the left and in the entertainment industry there is an almost Pavlovian response to any mention of Trump, a nearly Tourette’s-like explosion of expletive-laced vitriol that has a subtle cumulative impact on those exposed to it.
Trump simply needs to avoid being “that guy” when they do see him. He can’t be seen as talking about himself excessively. Yes, that’s his brand, and an odd part of his charm, but he’s secured the support of everyone to whom that appeals; they’re locked in. The choir has been preached to, the base has bellies full of red meat. Now it’s time to expand the tent.
Every poll shows the circumstances favor the presumptive Republican nominee, except when the question comes down to the presumptive Republican nominee himself. Trump needs to appeal to people who do not want to vote for him, but cannot fathom another four years of Biden. To do that, he needs to focus on the failures of the last four years compared to his term — on the economy, on the border, on inflation and on foreign unrest. If he does that, he might win in a walk.
If Trump spends too much time complaining about his own circumstances — and make no mistake, I believe he’s being railroaded in an unprecedented way by Democratic lawfare, so some talk of this is absolutely warranted — them he will lose. A presidential vote is not a pity-party. Voters want to know what they get out of voting for you, not what you get. If Trump can keep focus, he wins.
For Biden, it’s even simpler. It’s almost impossible for him to win, but his best chance is to be in public the man everyone who is hiding him from serious interviews and public appearances insists he is in private — an energetic man, in command of the conversation and the facts. Everything that Biden fails to be while reading from his teleprompter, he needs to be in front of people.
America’s enemies are inspired to do ill when they see their adversary is an elderly man with the breathy delivery of someone drifting off to sleep after a night of drinking…at a photo-op in the middle of the day.
Each candidate’s greatest asset will be the other guy. Each one’s worst liability is himself. The first to figure that out and do something about it — probably the biggest hurdle each one has to clear — will win.
Derek Hunter is host of the Derek Hunter Podcast and a former staffer for the late Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.).