Trump v. Biden: How the U.S. Ended Up With a Rematch

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CHIEF INTERNATIONAL HOST: Next, we turn to presidential politics in the United States where a Biden-Trump rematch is looking more likely than ever now. President Biden, of course, handily won Nevada’s Democratic primary yesterday. And while Former President Trump was not on that Republican ballot, Nikki Haley still came second to “none of these candidates.” That was the option. In his recent piece titled “This is Really Happening,” Atlantic magazine staff writer David Graham details the main reasons behind this rematch. And he tells Michel Martin how voters are feeling about it.

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MICHEL MARTIN, NPR, HOST: Thanks, Christiane. David Graham, thank you so much for joining us.

GRAHAM: Thank you.

MARTIN: You’ve written a bunch of pieces lately that have caught our eye, but there’s one in particular we wanted to talk about, where you basically said out loud what a lot of people are thinking, which is that it looks like 2024 is going to come down to a rematch between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, and that most people are pretty unhappy about that. So, how did we get to this point?

GRAHAM: Well, I think it says a lot about polarization. It says a lot about party structures. And it says a lot about, sort of, the disaffection that voters have from the process and from our politics in general. And I think it’s remarkable that this is an outcome that, in many ways, has seemed foreordained for years now. And yet, it’s one that in polls, consistently, voters say they don’t want or they say they don’t think they’re going to get. I think now maybe reality is starting to set in.

MARTIN: Well, that’s one of the interesting things about your piece that — and frankly, I couldn’t figure out quite how to capture, is that a lot of people seem to not want to believe it When the evidence is all there, that that is true. And one of the things you pointed out in your piece is that seems to be kind of on both sides of the aisle as it were.

GRAHAM: That’s right. I mean, you have Democrats saying that they don’t want and don’t expect Joe Biden to be the nominee. You have, apparently, according to a Biden internal campaign poll, like, three quarters of undecided say they don’t think that Trump will be the nominee. And if you look at the way a lot of Republican voters are acting, they are acting like they hope he won’t be the nominee. You even see this among Republican office holders who are slow to endorse him, even as he is a juggernaut, and keep talking as though there might be some sort of deus ex machina that would change that. You know, I think part of this is just about how surreal a lot of politics has been the last few years. Things keep happening that people don’t expect. And maybe there’s a hope that something else unexpected will happen, or there’s just a refusal to believe that this is really the way things are.

MARTIN: If you look at the polling, you know, Republican primary voters seem to be very committed to Donald Trump. So, I guess what I’m asking you is the dissatisfaction or lack thereof or whatever it is, is it the same on both sides or does it have different flavors, depending on whether you’re on the Democratic side or the Republican side?

GRAHAM: Yes, I think it does have different flavors. You know, on the Republican side, what you have is a large core, a majority of primary voters who want Donald Trump and are showing that. And then also a surprisingly large number who don’t. So, you know, we’re looking at varying percentages. We see about half of Iowa caucus goers, a solid percentage in New Hampshire, and we’ll see going forward people voting against him, which if you think of Trump as being kind of a de facto incumbent is a remarkable number. But it’s very much true, the majority of the party is behind him. What we see on the Democratic side is different. There’s not really any energy behind any of the challenges to him, whether that’s Marianne Williamson or Dean Phillips, as we’ve seen most recently in South Carolina results where they both clocked in around 2 percent. But what you see is a lack of enthusiasm, and also sort of a continuing hope maybe that something will happen and Biden will jump out and drop out of the race and somebody else will end up in that place. So, I think what you see is unhappiness on both sides, but it isn’t exactly symmetrical.

MARTIN: And also, just what people are unhappy about. I mean, on the Republican side, you know, I think, you know, people who are not Republicans seemed to be continually surprised that a person with 91, you know, felony charges against him continues to enjoy the level of support that he does. And on the Democratic side, people seem to be upset that Joe Biden is old. And that seems to be kind of different.

GRAHAM: That’s right. Among Democratic voters, there’s that concern that Joe Biden is old, and that is about, you know, their concerns about him. Among Republican voters, even as those felony charges have — you know, the sort of thing that has led Trump to have very low approval, and led many Republicans to vote against him in primaries, but by and large, it’s actually strengthened his support. You know, among Republican primary voters, we see his support only strengthening since those charges. We’ve seen his rivals were unable to capitalize on that. And in fact, we’re often blasting the charges themselves. So, that’s another way in which I think you’re right. They’re not really exactly the same thing. The sorts of concerns you have are very different. And I do think that part of the denial among some members of the electorate that Trump might be the nominee is about a kind of disbelief, an expectation that charges like that would undermine his support when, in fact, they’ve just strengthened it.

MARTIN: So, the, among the Republicans who are not pleased that Donald Trump is their presumptive nominee or it seems to be sort of head in that direction, what’s the source of it? What is it that they’re dissatisfied about? And what makes you so sure that they are, you know, what I mean, given that his primary support among his base seems to only get stronger and more fervent?

GRAHAM: I think it comes into a few groups. One group is people who have always had policy differences with Trump. And I think you see that coming out strongly in the Nikki Haley supporters. It’s people who, you know, disagree on foreign policy or people who want sort of more traditional country club Republican approach. That’s one group. And those people who voted against Trump in the primary in 2016. And then, for the most part, they got in line, or they left the Republican Party. There’s also people who are upset about the charges and think that it’s dangerous. They — you know, January 6th was a sort of alienating event for them. That was when it went too far. And I think the third group is people who have issues with Trump, but maybe will come around. And these are people who have said, again, since 2016, you know, you hear people, well, I like that he tells it how it is, or I like this or that. But, you know, I wish he wouldn’t talk that much or I wish he wouldn’t say it that way, or I wish you wouldn’t tweet those things. And so, you have those people expressing their opposition in their primary vote. And I think what we’re going to see is a lot of those people still voting for him in the general. And this is going to be a question — to the point of enthusiasm on the Democratic side, this is going to be an election about turnout. And so, the question is, will they turn out for Trump? What will they do? And will the people who think Biden is too old also sort of come around and vote for Trump — vote for Biden, especially if they are concerned about Trump potentially being reelected?

MARTIN: So, then the question becomes, how did this happen? That this becomes — that this is an election of your least worst choice, at least for a lot of people. How did that happen?

GRAHAM: I mean, I think we can trace a lot of this to the way the parties have changed. So, for one thing, both of these candidates are effectively running as incumbents and incumbency is a big advantage. You have a whole party infrastructure that is appointed by you that you have put in place and they’re going to be working to reelect you. So, for example, on the Democratic side. We’ve seen potentially, you know, strong Democratic candidates who not wanted to get into the race because they don’t want to get crosswise with the president. They don’t want to lose the support of the whole apparatus. And so, they’re not going to mess with that. On the Republican side, obviously, we’ve seen more eagerness by a lot of candidates to challenge Trump, but the effect has been the same. They just can’t get past the party infrastructure. And, you know, and if you look at a place like Nevada, where the Trump campaign or the Trump, sort of, apparatus was able to basically gain the system so that they cannot lose in Nevada. It’s a win-win situation for them. That’s that power. I think the other question is about polarization. So, in a time when both parties were, you know, full of — they had a liberal, a moderate and a conservative wing, you had to nominate someone who would appeal widely. And that’s no longer the case, the people who are electing the president are a relatively small base, people who come out for these primary elections. And so, they may favor Biden and they may favor Trump, even if a large majority of the country disapproves of both of these candidates. There just isn’t the same need to appeal broadly, or there’s not — they don’t feel the same need to appeal broadly to win the general election. And then they assume, given the sort of, you know, negative polarization, that the fear and hostility towards the other party, that voters will, in fact, vote come home, even if they don’t like the nominee because they fear the other guy more.

MARTIN: You know, on the one hand, you know, I could see your point, which is that, you know, the parties decide what the primaries will be. The parties decide how they’ll be run and so on. On the other hand, I think you could make an argument that parties — the political parties are weaker than they have ever been. Like, back in the day, you know, parties decided whether you could run or not. The parties organized the slates. They recruited people to run. They kind of gave you the tools to run. A lot of that has really gone away. So, you know what I mean? Is it that they have too much power or they have too little power?

GRAHAM: I think we’re talking about parties in a different way than we did that. You’re totally right about that. And what we don’t have is the sort of smoke-filled rooms of your (ph). And if you think about the 2016 Republican primary, where the party itself, the party apparatus, was largely against Trump and not only was it largely against Trump, but it didn’t have the power to do anything about that. They sort of spun their wheels until suddenly Trump was the nominee. I think what we see, for example, on the Republican side is the Trump apparatus and the Trump base, which is not a majority of the part of the country and a majority of the party, but not a huge one, not an overwhelming majority, is able to make these things happen. So, it’s not so much about the RNC itself, it’s more about the basis in these parties and these coalitions that have managed to sort of hijack the primary and make it go to place they go, without the sort of moderating influence of a party establishment that might say, well, we understand that this guy appeals to our heartstrings, but we need somebody who’s going to win a general election. The people who are coming out to vote for Trump, in many cases, aren’t concerned about the general election, or they think that Trump will win anyway, they think he has one, but they they’re sort of voting expressively for somebody who speaks to their concerns, even if another candidate is on paper, more electable. We see Nikki Haley saying, look, I do better against Biden. And so far, that obviously hasn’t — that hasn’t swung enough voters to help her out and overcome Trump.

MARTIN: You know, the other question I had is, is it that politics doesn’t necessarily mean the same thing to people that it used to mean. I mean, is it more of an identity issue than a means to an end?

GRAHAM: Yes, I think expressiveness is the way to think about it. And you see people voting expressively for Trump. You know, what policies do they support? Well, they support a tougher border policy. What does that look like? It’s often not clear on that sort of thing. It’s sort of vague. But it’s more about him saying the right things and the right tone of voice and standing up to the right people. And on the Democratic side, I think you see that the lack of enthusiasm is the same way. You know, Biden’s victory in 2020 was really about being able to sort of be enough to enough people. And what you see the splintering is people are saying, well, wait a second, I disagree with him on this. I disagree with him on that. And, you know, there’s a real division among Democratic strategists and pollsters who I’ve talked to about whether Democrats will come home. Some think, well, these are Democrats. They’re pragmatic. Eventually, they’re going to see, do we really want Trump? But I think there’s some voters who will say, this guy just isn’t — he isn’t doing it for me. And even if I don’t like Trump, I’m not going to vote for that because he doesn’t express my hopes and dreams for America. So, I think that’s an important factor in both of these, races.

MARTIN: So that leads to the question that some people might have, you know, particularly people who are familiar with the way politics is conducted in other parts of the world, which is you have a lot of parties. That has not been the reality in the United States really ever, except for short periods of time. There’s a group that you wrote about called No Labels, which is, considering a third-party presidential campaign as an alternative. What’s your take on it?

GRAHAM: I mean, I think it’s fascinating to see this effort. It’s very strange in many ways. And their diagnosis that people don’t want the choices they’re given is, by and large, true. I mean, you can definitely find support for that. I think the question is whether they are offering a real solution. You know, I think what’s interesting about what they’re doing is they’re offering valid access and they’re going to choose a candidate, but then they’re going to kind of turn things over to this candidate to come up with their own platform. So, it’s a quasi-party. It’s not clear what they — you know, what they stand for. I think there are a lot of problems with this idea as much as I understand the motivation behind it and agree with their analysis that a lot of voters want another alternative. One is that, although there is a thirst for some sort of moderate difference, once you start getting into the actual specifics of policy, people get really divided. And there are voters who simply don’t like the parties or voters who care about one thing or another, but you’re going to start getting people splitting on things like abortion, on things like immigration, and I think they’re going to run into trouble there. And the other problem is structural. I mean, a third-party candidate just has so many disadvantages. There’s very little prospect of them winning states in the electoral college, much less winning a majority in the electoral college. And so, then you have them in a position of maybe playing spoiler, which they say they’re not doing, or maybe sort of playing some kind of coalition kingmaker, which they have talked about. But I’m not sure how that works in the American system. I mean, we have an entire apparatus that’s built around two parties. And they think they can break that log again, but they haven’t really explained how they would do that.

MARTIN: Look, I know that your pieces have been describing what you see, it’s not — it’s descriptive. It’s not proscriptive. You’re not telling people what to do. But do you have a sense of a way forward here? What do you think would make a difference?

GRAHAM: You know, I’ve been, just the last couple weeks, talking to a lot of political scientists about depolarization. You know, insofar as many of these problems we’re seeing or these things we’re seeing are related to negative polarization, you know, fear of the other country — or other party, rather, or of polarization within the parties. How do we see those depolarize? You know, what could bring us back from that? And I have to say, I haven’t heard a lot of hopeful answers. We just don’t see a lot of cases where countries without a major shock have gone from something — a situation like this to a less polarized one. And I think the U.S. system is unusual and that it is a two-party system. We don’t have alternatives in the same way. And so, that also locks things in a little bit. So, I’m not really sure where I would expect things to change. We’ve heard both parties sort of — you know, Democrats in particular talk about the idea that a fever will break at some point. But I’m not sure what that would look like, or when we would expect that to happen.

MARTIN: And what about on the Republican side? I mean, you know, it’s true that Democrats often talk about the fever, you know, they want the fever to break and they sort of implies that some sort of virus has taken over the Republican Party, but, you know, what about on the Republican side? Is it — what do they think? Do you think that they think they’ll just persuade people that they’re right? Or, what do you think?

GRAHAM: I mean, insofar as the majority of Republicans support for Donald Trump, I think the message there is I alone can fix it. Trump is saying that he will handle it. He will steamroll his opponents. And as we’ve seen from what he said on the campaign trail, as well as what we saw when he was president, he’s perfectly happy to go around the law and to, you know, use minority rule to do that. So, it sort of sidesteps any need to do that. If you’re just seizing power, you don’t have to worry about persuasion, you don’t have to worry about assembling a governing coalition.

MARTIN: And before we let you go again, what is your sense of how — we’ve talked about what the public thinks about these candidates. But do you have a sense of what the public, broadly defined, thinks about the state of things? Do you have a sense of whether the public, broadly defined, thinks that this is OK, that this level of polarization, it just — is just something that they have to deal with? Or do they have a desire for something different?

GRAHAM: Well, I think it’s a mix. I mean, it’s a bit of a paradox maybe. People bemoan this. They say they’re unhappy about it. And I think they’re genuine about that, but they also then tend to blame the other party for it and think that those — you know, those other people are the issue. And so, even as people are upset about it, I think their analysis tends to feed back into the same dynamic.

MARTIN: David Graham, thanks so much for talking with us.

GRAHAM: Thank you.