According to Bill Ackman on Twitter, it is now abundantly clear that Donald Trump will crush Joe Biden. Ackman supports my cousin Dean for the Democratic presidential nomination. I agree with Ackman that the country would be better off with Dean as the Democratic nominee.
I also understand why Ackman would say that President Trump will crush President Biden. Biden is historically unpopular. He has relentlessly pursued stupid and destructive policies whose ill effects we can see all around us. We don’t have to wait a generation to weight the costs and benefits or assess the consequences.
We don’t need a generational perspective to be alarmed by Biden’s senescence. We know that President Biden was not sharp at the height of his powers. Everyone can see that at age 81 he is in a state of physical and mental decline. Indeed, we could see it in the 2020 campaign. Ackman must have that in mind as well.
Biden’s decline has simply continued and accelerated. It is one reason so many Americans want to see him give it up this time around. It is the reason his staff seeks to minimize his public exposure and maximize scripted settings. Even so, Biden wrestles with the teleprompter on a regular basis.
As president, Biden has taken full advantage of the possibilities of personal time off. We have never seen anything like it. In Federalist Number 70, Alexander Hamilton touted the necessity of “energy in the executive.” Biden tests the outer limits of lethargy.
Despite the advantages of incumbency — taking advantage of the power of incumbency — Biden has also rigged the Democratic nomination process to insulate himself from the regular course of caucuses and primaries. Iowa is out. New Hampshire is out. South Carolina is in.
How about President Trump? Trump’s greatest advantage against Biden is his ability to pose his record in office as president against Biden’s. No other Republican candidate would have that going for him or her. It should make Trump unbeatable in the general election, and yet at present Trump only narrowly edges Biden in the public polling.
Trump has his own disadvantages. Several of the obstacles he faces come in the form of the lawsuits and criminal charges pending against him. They seem to be part of a Democratic plan to elevate Trump in the eyes of Republicans in the primaries and then take him down in the general election. Projecting ahead to election day in November, one has to take some account of the impact the legal proceedings will have had on his standing with the independent voters who will decide the outcome of the election.
Most Americans don’t want a Trump versus Biden rematch, yet that is the prospect. Will Trump crush Biden? Would that it were so. He certainly should. Bill Ackman to the contrary notwithstanding, however, it seems unlikely to me.
Assuming Trump and Biden secure the nomination of their parties and putting third-party candidates to one side, either Trump or Biden has to win the general election. It might be Trump. It might be Biden. I advocate the application of the reality principle in assessing who has the best chance.