Trump vs Biden: America’s ‘worst election’

Sam Hawley: When Donald Trump left the White House in January 2021, it surely wasn’t in many people’s minds that he could be back. In fact, for many around the world, his departure was a sigh of relief. But here we are. Today, the Trump versus Biden rematch for the US presidency that many Americans don’t want and what disgruntled voters might do at the ballot box. I’m Sam Hawley on Gadigal land in Sydney. This is ABC News Daily.

Geoff Kabaservice: I’m Geoff Kabaservice. I’m the vice president for political studies at the Niskanen Center, which is a centre-right think tank in Washington DC in the United States.

Sam Hawley: Geoff, we’re going to unpack Donald Trump’s possible path back to the White House. But let’s start with Super Tuesday, which happened this week. Just remind me what that is.

Geoff Kabaservice: So the American system of determining who each political party’s nominee will be, has been through a series of caucuses and primaries. And Super Tuesday is so called because that is the date in February when there are a number of states holding their primaries at the same time and a very large number of delegates, indeed, almost a majority of delegates are determined on that date.

Donald Trump, former US president: They call it Super Tuesday for a reason. This is a big one. And they tell me, the pundits and otherwise, that there’s never been one like this.

Geoff Kabaservice: And as it turned out, to no one’s surprise, really, the people who swept the Super Tuesday primaries were exactly who we thought would sweep the primaries. And that was Joe Biden on the Democratic side and Donald Trump on the Republican side.

News Report: The result was, on the whole, a foregone conclusion. Donald Trump winning all but one contest from Alaska to Alabama, California to Maine.

Geoff Kabaservice: So even though at various times, vast numbers of Americans have told pollsters that they really, really, really don’t want to see the 2024 presidential election be a rematch of the 2020 presidential election. In fact, that’s exactly what we are going to get, barring some act of God.

Sam Hawley: Geoff, that will be the first presidential rematch in 70 years. But as you mention, it’s not really what Americans want. What are they saying about this?

Geoff Kabaservice: Well, you know, both of the presidential candidates are going to be, historically, the most unpopular presidential nominees in American history. And, you know, that’s sort of unwelcome in many ways. It doesn’t bode well for American democracy. But in practice, this means that it really is almost a rematch of two incumbents. And the dynamics are very different from what we’ve been used to in past contests.

US voter: I mean, the fact that we have Biden and Trump to choose from, it’s disgraceful.

US voter: I knew it was inevitable. I’m just disappointed as well. It’s just going to make us look like more of a circus to the rest of the world, which is just disappointing.

US voter: A little disappointing that this country is still stuck on the same thing. We deserve someone that’s not pushing, you know, 80, 90 years old to be in office.

Sam Hawley: We do, Geoff, of course, have eight months until the election in the United States still. But let’s have a look now at what the polls are showing. What do we know at this point?

Geoff Kabaservice: Well, you know, it’s frankly a bit earlier for the polls to say what is going to happen in November, because a lot of things can and will change. But at this point, not only is it that Joe Biden is facing historically low ratings in terms of his popularity, it also seems to be showing that if the rematch was held tomorrow, that Donald Trump would win pretty handily. So the polls show that both candidates, as I said, are historically unpopular. And the reasons aren’t hard to find. Joe Biden is unpopular because of the high rates of inflation that this country has experienced, even though those have declined. And yet food prices in particular are much higher than they were prior to the pandemic and Biden’s presidency. And that is counting heavily against him. And inflation historically has been the president killer. Biden has also scored poorly on the issue of the border, which seems to many Americans to be out of control. Large numbers of immigrants coming and seemingly no way to reduce this flow to manageable levels. Donald Trump, on the other hand, is somebody who presided over a fairly disastrous response to that pandemic, which led to a million Americans dying. And Trump is also, frankly, a chaotic candidate, historically has been. Is someone who seems on the verge of mental derangement, even as Biden seems like somebody on the verge of old age-induced feebleness. And then, of course, let’s not forget that Donald Trump is facing 91 criminal charges, some of which stem from his attempt to foment a coup to keep himself in power on January 6th, 2021. So this wouldn’t seem like a kind of ideal choice for Americans. And yet that’s what we’ve got.

US voter: It hurts my soul to say that I will vote for Joe Biden over Donald Trump. COVID is a big one. He acted like it wasn’t a big deal. My dad died of it for Republican politics. It’s just unconscionable.

US voter: It’s a Trump Biden rematch. I mean, to be honest with you, life was a lot better underneath the other guy, you know, orange man bad, but you know, so what? I was making money. I’m struggling now. The guy that’s in there right now has drastically screwed things up.

Geoff Kabaservice: So, yeah, very concerning if you’re a Democrat. A lot of Democrats have been putting pressure on Biden to fulfil what seemed to be his promise that he would be a one term president and let younger people sort out who will be the nominee. But at this point, it looks like he is determined to be the nominee and carry on into November.

Joe Biden, US president: One of the things that people are going to find out, they’re going to see a race and they’re going to judge whether or not I have or don’t have it. I respect them taking a hard look at it. I take a hard look at it as well. I took a hard look at it before I decided to run.

Sam Hawley: Why haven’t the Democrats just said to him, look, we need to switch you out for someone else? And is that actually a possibility?

Geoff Kabaservice: Well, you know, in practice, the American president is an enormously powerful person. And frankly, if he wants to be the party’s nominee, there isn’t really a mechanism in place to stop him if he is not actually disabled. And frankly, Biden doesn’t seem to be disabled. He’s not senile. It’s just that he seems to be low energy and doesn’t have the kind of responsiveness and quickness on his feet that he would have had even a few years ago.

Joe Biden, US president: My memory is not good. My memory is fine. My memory, take a look at what I’ve done since I’ve become president. None of you thought I could pass any of the things I got passed. How’d that happen? You know, I guess I just forgot what was going on.

Sam Hawley: All right. So there’s a few things, though, working against Joe Biden in the minds of voters at the moment, including his age and the economy and migration, of course. On the other side, though, Geoff, just tell me, who are the people who’ll vote for Trump? Who’s he attracting at this point? And is he attracting new voters?

Geoff Kabaservice: So the demographic shift in American politics, which we’ve seen over the past few decades, but has been accelerated under Trump, is that blue collar, non-college educated workers who used to vote pretty significantly Democratic have now been voting Republican by almost the same large margins. On the other hand, college educated Americans who used to vote pretty solidly for Republicans have now been shifting almost overwhelmingly into the Democratic category. So this means that the parties have, in effect, traded their bases. And in particular, Donald Trump struggles to win over some voters who used to pretty regularly and reliably vote Republican, but who have that college education and tend to live in the suburbs. And this is why it’s almost impossible to predict the outcome of an American election, because both teams are almost evenly balanced. Their strengths are offset by weaknesses that almost exactly correspond with the strengths and deficiencies on the other side. It makes it very difficult for political prognosticators.

Sam Hawley: But surprisingly, I suppose, Black and Hispanic voters are actually abandoning Biden. Does that surprise you?

Geoff Kabaservice: Well, again, it’s not sure if they’re abandoning Biden and the Democratic Party in terms of Black and Hispanic voters. But the reality is that significant majorities of African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans are working class. And so in some sense, they are starting to vote in keeping with what you would expect, given their class background, outlook, interests and priorities.

Sam Hawley: So what’s his pitch, Donald Trump, to them?

Geoff Kabaservice: You know, it’s difficult to say what exactly is the appeal of Trump. It may simply be that a lot of particularly Black and Hispanic working-class voters look at Democratic priorities and say, you know, I’m not represented by this emphasis on cultural division, on using the right gender pronouns, or the Democrats’ effort to put electric cars on the roads instead of the gas burning vehicles. I actually was talking with a Black voter today who said that the Democrats’ efforts to take away menthol cigarettes was just indicative of their unwillingness to listen to actual Black voters. And that was why he was going to vote for Donald Trump. But again, it’s not quite clear to what extent people’s discontents with the Democrats at this point will translate into actual votes for Donald Trump when that binary, almost Manichean choice is presented to voters in November.

Sam Hawley: Yeah, because as we mentioned, there are many Americans that just don’t like the idea of this contest at all. So I wanted to ask you, what happens if a substantial number of voters decide they don’t want to vote at all? Is that a possibility if they don’t like the two contenders that are up there, that they just won’t vote?

Geoff Kabaservice: Well, you know, there is a variable at play in November’s elections, which will be somewhat different from what we’ve seen in the past. And that is that there could be a strong push on the part of independent parties that are neither Republican or Democrat. The candidate who’s gotten the most traction so far is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who, of course, possesses one of the famous last names in American politics. He does have some, frankly, nutty positions in terms of his conspiratorial beliefs and especially his opposition to vaccines.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., US presidential candidate: I’m here to join you in making a new declaration of independence for our entire nation. We declare independence from Wall Street, from big tech, from big pharma.

Geoff Kabaservice: But he has had success in getting on ballots in a number of critical swing states, and that could prove to be determinative. And what we could see is that this will be a low turnout election because a lot of people don’t like the choices in front of them. Or if they decide that they really ought to fulfil their democratic duty and vote, they’ll vote for a third party. And, you know, this can change calculations. The way that people vote in just a handful of swing states can make the difference between who wins. And so for that reason, people are very closely looking at both voter disaffection from the system and also the appeal of third party or independent candidates.

Sam Hawley: So I have to ask you, Geoff, do you think there is a path to the White House for Donald Trump?

Geoff Kabaservice: You know, there actually was a year ago a belief that Donald Trump would not be the nominee of the Republican Party. And yet what brought Donald Trump back really was two things, I would say. First of all, it was the belief on the part of his supporters that the indictments against him just proved his appeal. It proved that the Democrats in the deep state are trying to take down Donald Trump because he’s the candidate that they fear. And then the other factor was that, you know, there was a while when it looked like Donald Trump would be a weak candidate who could not defeat Joe Biden in a rematch. But then came Biden’s electoral and polling difficulties. That’s when you had inflation go up. And suddenly Republicans started believing that Joe Biden was such a feeble candidate that any Republican could defeat him. However, you know, I could certainly spin you a scenario where Joe Biden not only wins convincingly in November, but Democrats also sweep Republicans out of control because, you know, there are simply so many vulnerabilities on the Republican side. This is going to be America’s longest electoral contest where we already know the nominees and probably the worst election that we’ve seen in terms of the mud that will be slung and the unhappiness of the American people about the choice that presents them.

Sam Hawley: Geoffrey Kabaservice is the vice president of political studies at the Niskanen Centre in Washington DC. This episode was produced by Nell Whitehead and Bridget Fitzgerald. Audio production by Sam Dunn. Our supervising producer is David Coady. Over the weekend catch the first two episodes of a special Background Briefing series called Stop and Search. Why was a man who hadn’t committed a crime chased by police into his backyard and shot? Search for Background Briefing on the ABC Listen app – and that’s where you can find all our past episodes too. ABC News Daily will be back again on Monday. Thanks for listening.