The campaign for the 2024 presidential election is shaping up as a remake of 2020, with a new duel between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. However, if they seem today the inevitable candidates of their respective parties, the current president and his predecessor are rejected by their compatriots, and even by more than a third of the sympathizers of their own formations.
Biden and Trump have other things in common. First, that of not being able to talk about each other without demonizing each other or insulting their rival’s voters.
Both are also the most unpopular presidents since Jimmy Carter at this point in a first term. They would be over 82 at the end of a second term, with Biden already the oldest president in US history. Both practicedAmerica First and have, each in their own style, clashed with some of their country’s oldest allies, including Canada for Trump and France for Biden.
Biden and Trump are both dragging pots and are under federal investigation for violating the Government Secrets Act.
Trump, for his part, is the first American president to be charged, in this case under the Campaign Finances Act, because he is accused of having bought, in 2016, the silence of a porn actress on a alleged sexual relationship. Trump is also being prosecuted for rape and is being investigated for misconduct in the management of his business, for intimidating Georgia election officials in 2020 and for attempting to interfere in the transfer of power after this election.
As for Biden, he is the first president to be under federal investigation along with at least one member of his family. His son Hunter is notably suspected of tax evasion, corruption and influence peddling linked to his lucrative contracts with China, Ukraine and Russia when Joe Biden was in charge of these same countries as vice-president.
Another common point between Biden and Trump: on balance, Americans want neither. A rejection that has been expressed for more than a year. A disavowal which is today abyssal: only 5% of Americans want to see the film “Biden against Trump”.
In poll after poll, Americans are indeed expressing their thirst for profound change. Beyond a renewal of their political class, they want a different political offer, more choice, more competitive primaries, more independent candidates from the two dominant parties.
Moreover, independent voters, those who do not identify with either the Democratic Party or the Republican Party, have been the only growing category since 1991 and the dominant category since 2009, fluctuating between 37 and 43% of the electorate. On the other hand, the Democratic and Republican affiliations have not represented more than 36% of the electorate each since 1988. In 2022, 41% of voters claimed to be independent, when the Democratic and Republican affiliations only united 28% of voters each.
In such a context, a Biden-Trump duel would contradict and hinder the deeply democratic aspirations of Americans. A true embodiment of the sclerosis of the political system, it would mark a new degree in the hegemony of the two “big” parties which, after having stifled external competition from third-party candidates thanks to their hold on the political system, debate and media coverage, now stifle internal competition.
Emblematic in this regard: Biden, despite the enormous advantage that the status of incumbent president confers on any candidate seeking a second term in the White House, has had the order of the Democratic primaries of 2024 changed, relegating to Greek ‘Iowa, where he suffered a bitter failure in 2020, finishing only 4e behind his rivals for the nomination. Biden, with the help of party notables, also allowed Super PACs, the most opaque type of election influence tools of the wealthy, to meddle in the primaries, sweeping away the proposal of former Bernie Sanders. Biden’s rival in 2020. And like incumbent President Trump three years ago, Biden is refusing any televised debate with his declared rivals for the nomination, Democrats Marianne Williamson and Robert Kennedy Jr.
Instead of responding to the aspirations of the American people, the parties controlling access to power in Washington are therefore only promising, with a second Biden-Trump duel, a new paroxysm in partisan radicalization and the theatricalization of the issues.
In this game, basely politician, Biden, who has nevertheless achieved the feat of being even less desired than Trump, has three trump cards. He and his entourage control the Democratic Party more than Trump controls the Republican Party. Faced with an electorate very skeptical about the merits of his candidacy, Biden is banking on the mobilizing value of the foil tactic, the “everything but Trump”, which has already proven itself in 2020 and during the mid-term legislative elections. Posing as someone who wants to “defend democracy”, Biden is finally counting on the complacency of many pro-democratic American media which, in 2020, had already granted him the privilege of being the candidate with the least scrutiny in the history of the presidential elections. Americans.