NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE {U} sually, although not always, what’s obvious prevails in politics.
It was pretty obvious, for instance, that Joe Biden was a stronger general-election candidate in 2016 than Bernie Sanders, and lo and behold, Biden rose from the dead and won the Democratic nomination.
Sometimes passion, calculated risk-taking, delusion, or stasis overwhelms the obvious, though. When this happens to one party — think of the Goldwater or McGovern nominations — it often suffers a debacle. But what if both parties succumb to these forces at same time?
Then you get a clash of weakness where both parties risk throwing away a winnable race through their insistence on fielding desperately flawed candidates unpalatable to the larger public.
The Republican reaction to the likely renomination of Joe Biden is, in effect, “We’ll see and raise your unpopular incumbent who looks as if he could tip over at any moment with an unpopular former president who will likely be convicted of felonies next year.”
The Democratic reaction to the likely renomination of Donald Trump is, in effect, “We’ll see and raise your radioactive standard-bearer with a president who is trailing him in polls and who most people think can’t serve another four years.”
Both parties think they are going to win anyway, but even if they are right, their chances of victory would go up appreciably if they switched away from their current presumptive nominees.
A generic Democrat who is not festooned with Biden’s failures and weaknesses and is not in his or her 80s would almost certainly beat Trump handily. (Kamala Harris does not meet the definition of such a Democrat.)
A generic Republican who hasn’t spent years making him- or herself hateful to suburbanites, who isn’t wedded to ridiculous yarns about the 2020 election, and who isn’t in serious legal jeopardy in multiple jurisdictions would almost certainly beat Biden handily.
According to the latest USA Today/Suffolk poll, Trump leads Biden on who’s best to handle the economy, foreign affairs, and the border, while surveys consistently find that about three-quarters have doubts about Biden’s ability to continue in the office for another term.
And yet the mandarins of the Democratic Party believe that he’s best suited to beating Trump.
On the other hand, despite all his troubles, Biden has a higher favorable rating (39 percent positive, 49 percent negative) than Trump (35 percent positive, 54 percent negative), according to a recent NBC News poll.
There’s no doubt that Trump could eke out a win against Biden, the way he did against Hillary Clinton in 2016. But why settle for hoping for a narrow win against such a debilitated incumbent?
With Trump, the GOP will be asking the middle of the electorate to conclude, “We can’t stand this guy, and there’s nothing that can make us change our minds about him, but things are so bad in the country that perhaps we should give him a try again, anyway.”
Maybe that happens, but it isn’t the strongest grounds on which to contest an election.
The parties show no sign of replacing their presumptive nominees, though. Benefiting from incumbency, Biden is all but unchallenged, and Trump continues to have an incredible grip on Republican voters.
So neither party is likely to adjust to take account of the obvious, and both will probably roll the electoral dice unnecessarily next year instead.