Voters clearly don’t want Trump-Biden rematch. But they’ll have to act to avoid it | Opinion
Americans couldn’t be much clearer about what they don’t want in the 2024 presidential election: A Joe Biden-Donald Trump rematch.
In our twisted politics, of course, that’s what they’re most likely to get.
Twice as many Democratic-leaning voters say they don’t want Biden as the party’s nominee than those who wish to see him re-elected, a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll found. Trump does better among Republicans, but they still want someone other than Trump, 49%to 44%. Solid majorities overall say they’d be disappointed or even angry if one or the other was elected.
Here’s the problem: Most of them won’t bother to participate in the selection of either the Republican or Democratic nominee. They’ll leave it largely to political obsessives, then turn up in November 2024 for the general election and complain about the choices.
“Can’t we do better than these two in a country of 330 million people?” the refrain goes. It’s a fair point. Some, disgusted by the choice, will just sit it out.
But voters who truly want to get out of this loop of doom should lean the other direction. They need to participate more, not less. They need to vote in primaries.
Republicans, as the out-of-power party, are likely to field more choices. But a former president will come with a devoted base of followers. If voters who don’t want Trump don’t show up to vote, his edge will be hard for Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley or anyone else to overcome.
Other Republicans have yet to figure out exactly how to take on Trump, either in style or in substance. Various theories focus on whether he can win, his age or his eligibility to serve only one more term if he wins. For now, Republicans risk repeating their 2016 mistakes — too many candidates fighting each other to be the anti-Trump candidate, then waiting until it’s too late to truly challenge him.
If Republicans field more than a dozen candidates again, a split field works in Trump’s favor. Casual Republicans — those who don’t usually vote in primaries — must engage. If they truly believe that taxes and spending, illegal immigration and progressive cultural issues threaten the very fabric of the country, they must prioritize winning.
Trump, however, has never won a majority of votes. Not in early 2016 primaries. Not against Hillary Clinton — his victory was a mathematical wonder, just enough votes in just enough states to take the Electoral College, not easily replicated. And not in 2020, despite the screaming from the fringes. Trump got fewer votes than a guy who rarely left his house.
Trump has never shown a capacity to grow his appeal. But he’ll go scorched-earth on DeSantis and others if that’s what it takes.
Democrats have a more peculiar problem. Voters want a choice other than Biden, but party leaders will be reluctant to give it to them. It’s a career-threatening step to take on a current president in a primary, and right now, no one of consequence seems likely to attempt it.
That’s true even though Democrats know Biden has an electability problem of his own. Fairly or not, his age and mental capacity are top of mind for voters. The worst case scenario for Democrats is that Biden coasts to the nomination, then stumbles, physically or mentally, in a high-profile way in late 2024.
But elite Democrats can’t go there. Texan Julián Castro, the former U.S. housing secretary and brief 2020 presidential candidate, seized on the Post-ABC poll’s finding that Biden trails Trump in a hypothetical matchup, one of the few prominent Democrats to raise any concern about Biden’s chances.
In either party, it wouldn’t take much for a new group of voters to swing the outcome. The 2016 nominating contests drew a strong total turnout approaching 58 million. But nearly 137 million people voted in the general election that year, and tens of millions more could have.
Many of these voters know what they don’t want: the Biden-Trump rematch. They’d better get involved in preventing it.
This story was originally published February 18, 2023 at 6:31 AM with the headline "Voters clearly don’t want Trump-Biden rematch. But they’ll have to act to avoid it | Opinion."
