Presidential race looks even between Biden, Trump

Nathan L. Gonzales | (TNS) CQ-Roll Call

WASHINGTON — While the presidential race is careening toward a rematch, 2024 won’t necessarily be a replay of 2020.

The race looks familiar with President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump topping the ballot, but both men are bringing more baggage to the contest, creating a level of volatility that doesn’t often accompany rematches.

The familiar is apparently fueling optimism from the incumbent. “I’m the only one who has ever beat him. And I’ll beat him again,” Biden told The New Yorker recently about facing Trump again. But Biden is in a fundamentally weaker position this time around.

Instead of a challenger facing an unpopular incumbent, Biden is the unpopular incumbent seeking reelection. Voters are holding Biden responsible for the country’s ills while romanticizing (or at least forgetting about) the challenges during Trump’s first term.

Biden’s job rating has been poor and steady for two-and-a-half years. The president’s disapproval rating has been higher than his approval rating ever since the country’s exit from Afghanistan. Biden is also the country’s oldest president in history with a disproportionate focus on his ability to serve a second term.

Last fall, Democrats comforted themselves by comparing Biden’s unpopularity to President Barack Obama’s standing in 2011. But Obama’s job rating had improved by this point in 2012.

Since public opinion has hardened around Biden, the president will likely have to rely on voters who disapprove of the president to support him for a second term. Luckily for Democrats, Trump gives Biden an opening to do just that.

With more than 90 indictments in four different federal cases, hundreds of millions of dollars in fines due in civil cases and his unwillingness to call off his supporters as they invaded the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Trump has given independent voters reasons to pause before giving him a second term.

Yet despite his remarkable list of liabilities, Trump is in a strong position if the election were held today. He leads by a couple points in the national polling average, which doesn’t mean as much as his polling lead in key swing states including Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, North Carolina and Georgia. But the election is more than seven months away.