We're stuck with Biden and Trump — but for totally different reasons
Anna Moneymaker and Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
- Many voters aren't happy about having to choose between Biden and Trump again.
- Here's the truth: several credible Republicans ran against Trump, and he beat them all.
- But Democrats didn't get a real choice. No credible candidates challenged Biden in the primary.
You've probably heard friends or family say it.
Perhaps you've even uttered some version of it yourself: "I can't believe we're stuck with Donald Trump and Joe Biden again."
If you feel this way, you've got quite a bit of company. An April survey from the Pew Research Center found that 49% of voters would replace both candidates if that were possible.
This scenario might tempt some to rail against the so-called "duopoly" of politics or bemoan the fact that neither the Republican Party nor the Democratic Party are able to field more popular candidates.
But it's important to understand that Biden and Trump are set to be their party's nominees for quite different reasons.
Republican voters had a lot of choices. They resoundingly chose Trump.
It might be easy to forget at this point, but Trump had lots of opponents.
Over a dozen people challenged Trump for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, including one senator, one governor, three former governors, a former member of his cabinet, and his own vice president.
Trump handily beat all of them, winning a majority of the vote in all but two places: Vermont and Washington, DC.
It's not like they didn't raise enough money, bring enough experience, or were failed to effectively prosecute the case against Trump. Nikki Haley, the candidate who lasted the longest of all of the contenders, did all of those things.
It's just that GOP voters — who make up roughly a third of the electorate — overwhelmingly chose Trump, and the highest levels of the party once again fell in line behind him.
Polls showed Democrats open to alternatives. They never got a credible one.
On the other hand, Democrats ended up being stuck with Biden, despite plenty of indication that there was room for an alternative.
In July 2022, polling showed that nearly two-thirds of Democrats did not want Biden to run for a second term. In February of this year, a New York Times/Siena College poll found that 45% of Democrats said that Biden should not be the nominee, versus 46% who said he should.
That same poll found that just 23% of Democrats were enthusiastic about his candidacy. Polling has also shown that most Democrats believe he's too old to serve.
Sensing the possibility of an opening, just one elected Democrat stepped forward to challenge Biden: Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota.
But the Minnesota congressman's campaign failed to catch on. He didn't have the gravitas of a governor of a senator, made occasional gaffes on the trail, and most crucially, was marginalized by the top echelons of the party.
In short, if you're frustrated with your choices this November, you've got two very different groups to blame: GOP voters and Democratic Party elites.