With Biden-Trump rematch likely, 2024 is going to feel a lot like 2020, like it or not

If you enjoyed the 2020 presidential election, get ready: This year is almost certain to be a replay in more ways than one.

Even with nine months of politics to play out before the Nov. 5 general election, it would take a gigantic surprise for it not to be a rematch between Democratic President Joe Biden and Republican former President Donald Trump, despite both being unpopular with the American public.

And it will almost certainly take much of the same tack as 2020 did, with Biden framing it as a battle for the soul of democracy and Trump hurling insults and blaming the administration for anything bad (inflation, illegal immigration) while taking credit for anything good (the stock market, the economy). Throw in a strong dose of invective over Biden’s age (81) and intrigue involving his son Hunter (tax evasion, overseas businesses), contrasted with Trump’s age (77) and legal problems (91 criminal counts in four cases) and whether absentee voting is a virtue (Biden) or sin (Trump) and you probably get the idea.

Are the voters in Michigan, which will again play a key role in the outcome, excited? Hardly.

“I feel awful about it, they’re both ancient,” said David Damitio, a 43-year-old independent and iron worker who lives in Wayne. He'd like to see former Ambassador and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley as the Republican nominee, thinking he might give her a look given his concerns that Biden’s been too easy on letting Israel bomb Gaza in the wake of Hamas’ attacks last October. But if Trump is the nominee? Fuggedaboudit.

“I’m going to vote for Biden,” he said. “I don’t want to but that’s how I’m going to vote.”

More than a year ago, it was clear from polling that Michigan voters of both parties were ready to move on to other candidates in the '24 presidential election. But it never happened: No other GOP candidate ever gained enough support to crack Trump's base and in Tuesday's in-name-only primary in Nevada where Trump wasn't even competing, Haley got fewer voters than the "none of these candidates" choice, Meanwhile, the incumbent president remains the titular head of the Democratic Party, and the chief architect of his political future, whether some critics want him or not.

Which leaves voters with what is likely to be a binary choice come November: Biden or Trump, Trump or Biden. One of them is going to be president.

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Both now appear to be willing to lean into a replay of 2020, absent (hopefully) a worldwide pandemic and facing new political realities with wars raging in Ukraine and the Middle East and other issues like abortion rights and record numbers of encounters with undocumented immigrants along the Southern border rattling voters.

Despite an economic record of low unemployment and stock market gains most presidents would be envious of, Biden has been less pronounced touting his administration's achievements — because they haven't helped his job approval ratings — than in reminding voters of what Trump was like, much as he did four years ago. Tax breaks that helped corporations and wealthy individuals more than working people. A conservative Supreme Court that overturned abortion protections enshrined in Roe v. Wade. Attempts to ban entry into the U.S. from majority Muslim countries and to split up families crossing the Southern border. Baseless claims that he won the 2020 election when he lost and egging on a crowd of supporters that attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

"Imagine the nightmare of Donald Trump," Biden said at a rally last weekend in Nevada.

Trump, too, can hardly help himself in making the 2024 election largely about the last one. When Biden went to Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, early this year to frame Trump as an antidemocratic force, Trump, who has repeatedly continued to claim he won the 2020 election when he did not, accused Biden of “fearmongering” and called the Jan. 6 perpetrators who attacked the Capitol and have been jailed “hostages.” Even some Republican U.S. senators distanced themselves from the remark.

But Trump's message — that Biden has been too lax on border security, that his policies have led to higher inflation and that he's weak and ineffectual — have clearly resonated with voters, especially those in his base. Polls have shown him ahead in many key swing states in a head-to-head matchup with Biden, including some in Michigan. One recent poll had him 24 points ahead of Haley in South Carolina's Feb. 24 primary, despite her having been governor there.

And Trump has used the prosecutions he faces to argue the Biden administration has weaponized the Justice Department against him despite any evidence to support it. “Joe Biden is not the defender of American democracy, Joe Biden is the destroyer of American democracy," Trump said in December.

And some voters who may not relish the rematch are nonetheless ready to make a switch back to the former president.

“The last time around I did vote for Joe Biden,” said Ann Olszewski, a 51-year-old Clinton Township account manager for a benefits broker who leans Republican. No big fan of Trump's, she still blames Biden for allowing undocumented immigrants to swarm the Southern border. She also criticized him for leading a Democratic Party that she believes has so embraced transgender rights that she considers it "an attempt to really cancel me out as a woman." And this from someone who said she fully supports marriage equality between the sexes.

Unless Trump “goes on a puppy-murdering spree over the next few months,” he’s got her vote. And she said she knows at least two people who voted for Biden last time who feel the same.

“I think it’s really unfortunate that again there are these candidates, one an old man who I believe is cognitively challenged … and the other who has totalitarian dreams,” she said.

As the incumbent, Biden clearly can’t avoid running on the state of affairs in the U.S. and the world. Inflation, while down significantly from its high of 9% in June 2022 still outpaced wage gains for much of his first term and voters have felt the pinch in their wallets. Republican hardliners in Congress balked at Biden's embrace of bipartisan legislation that would impose tougher measures on the Southern border, arguing it doesn't go far enough — and whether that was done for political reasons or not, it still leaves Biden and Trump vying with the public as to which party deserves more blame.

And even many Democrats, including scores of Arab American and Muslim voters in southeastern Michigan, say they can't vote for Biden given his refusal to demand an Israeli cease-fire in Gaza, with some launching a "Listen to Michigan" campaign urging voters to select "uncommitted" in the Feb. 27 Democratic primary. Polls suggest many younger voters are unimpressed with the president.

That, say some, gives Biden little choice but to present voters with the same him-or-me contrast he gave them facing Trump four years ago.

“Among the top challenges Biden has is that he really doesn’t have his base activated,” said Kevin Madden, a Washington, D.C. public affairs executive who worked as a Republican adviser on both of Mitt Romney’s presidential campaigns and has been a frequent pundit on cable news. “He needs them to understand and embrace an election battle that is reframed with much higher stakes.”

And that's especially true, he said, among voters in swing states — Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona and Georgia — who may need to be reminded how “toxic” Trump’s embrace of instability and chaos was.

“They maybe don’t love Joe Biden but they need Joe Biden,” Madden said.

Biden, Trump continue to spar for working-class voters in Michigan

That campaign has started to play out across the U.S. with Trump claiming the clear front-runner status in the Republican primary and there even being debates about naming him the presumptive GOP nominee, even though Haley is still plugging away ahead of South Carolina's primary on Feb. 24 and Michigan's on Feb. 27.

And in recent weeks, Biden's efforts have gotten a boost. Even without appearing on the ballot in New Hampshire, Biden won as a write-in nominee there. He also got a rousing endorsement — complete with an anti-Trump speech — from UAW President Shawn Fain, who is fresh off a successful strike against the Detroit Three automakers and could be a valuable surrogate for Biden especially in Michigan and across the industrial Midwest.

That, too, is reminiscent of 2020.

Four years before that, then-Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton spent little time in Michigan after the state had gone to the party's nominee in every election since 1988. But after Trump won it in 2016 by a slim two-tenths of a percentage point, helped by some disaffected union workers, including UAW workers, Biden worked to get them back in 2020.

This year, that campaign could take time to bear fruit: Most polls dating to last fall indicate Trump has a lead over Biden in Michigan and in several other battleground states. They indicate Trump still has an edge with some voters, especially white voters without a college degree — which may include some union members. And the Republican former president has made clear he will use Biden's and the Democrats' support of transitioning the auto industry to electric vehicles, which he claims will decimate U.S. auto manufacturing despite billions in new investments and subsidies, as a wedge with working-class voters.

But even if it hasn't shown up in the polls yet, there are still voters in Michigan who, while not enthusiastic about a rematch, appear to have Biden’s back.

“I think it’s disappointing that there aren’t enough fresh faces, fresh thoughts, fresh leaders in the Democratic Party that are ready to pick up the mantle after Biden and the same on the Republican side, that there’s no one that can dethrone (Trump) and be a more reasonable voice,” said Blake Bogart, a 31-year-old management consultant in Ann Arbor who has voted for candidates of both parties in the past. “In the end, I’m generally happy with how Biden has handled things and I’m fairly terrified with the prospect of another Trump presidency.”

What’s unclear is whether an effort by Biden and his allies to remind voters of Trump's single term in office — the breaks with institutional norms, the partisan infighting, the praise for dictators like North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and more — is enough to derail a former president who did oversee a strong economy, a growing stock market and took steps to try to force job creation in the U.S. and limit it overseas.

Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg argues it’s not, writing in the Sunday Times in London last month that it’s Trump who is running “an effective campaign that has deepened support among working-class voters.” Biden, he said, has to break out of an elite political bubble in Washington to counter it and remind swing-state voters that “working-class Joe” understands them.

Greenberg has a point: Even if many of the GOP claims against Biden are exaggerated — inflation is down significantly from where it was, as is violent crime across the U.S. — Biden will ultimately have to run on how people perceive his record, whether he likes it or not, and not merely the fact that he's facing Trump.

Jenell Leonard, a Republican consultant and owner of Lansing-based strategic communications firm Marketing Resource Group, largely agreed that while Trump motivates voters both for and against him, a Biden campaign largely based on anti-Trump sentiment could come up short. “If you’re not willing to play on the tabletop issues that are resonating, I don’t see it working,” she said.

And while she said it’s possible Trump will face his own enthusiasm problem among independent and more moderate Republican voters, Biden’s issues with progressives — who want him to demand an Israeli cease-fire and are suspicious of his age — and independents play against him, especially since increases in consumer prices for food, energy and other goods, while not rising as fast as they were or maybe even falling, still have been higher than wage gains in recent years.

"Biden focusing only on (the threat to) democracy is a losing issue," she said. "He’s the sitting president. He has to focus on the last four years and give people a reason to vote for him, not just against Trump.”

Biden's successes haven't helped him much yet

Biden’s problem is: He’s tried that. And he continues to try that.

With help from a group of Republican senators, he was able to pass a sweeping infrastructure bill of a scope that Trump could never wrangle out of Congress. He passed scaled-down versions of climate change legislation, health care bills and gun control measures.

But what has appeared to dog him, besides his age and his occasional verbal mistakes and physical stumbles, are his defeats. An attempt for widespread student loan forgiveness was knocked down by the Supreme Court, leading to a more targeted plan. The administration was criticized for the way the withdrawal from Afghanistan was conducted in 2021. The administration's support of Israel, a long-term ally, in counterattacking Hamas in Gaza to such a degree that tens of thousands of people have been killed, has left Biden in a tough spot politically with progressives who argue Palestinians are being slaughtered en masse in pursuit of revenge.

That's playing out in southeastern Michigan in real time, as the Biden team has already taken steps to meet with Arab American leaders to listen to their concerns, including at a meeting between local leaders and senior administration staff on Thursday. No one's entirely sure what happens if much of that bloc sits out the election, given how large the community is in Michigan — about 3% of the state's voting-age population — especially if other disaffected would-be Democrats stay home.

That could hearken back to another election, the one eight years ago, when voter apathy and third-party defections doomed Clinton in Michigan and helped send Trump to the White House. But as Dearborn's mayor, Abdullah Hammoud, said as he declined to meet with Biden's campaign manager, "This is not a moment for electoral politics," but for Biden to demand a cease-fire.

That's not a simple matter either, however, given that Hamas attacked Israel first, that it still holds Israeli hostages, that Israel is both a sovereign nation born out of the tragedy of the Holocaust and an ally in the part of the world where the U.S. has many enemies. But that's no answer to Israel's economic and humanitarian blockade of Gaza that has led to complaints of human rights violations.

Which leads back to the question about what is the most effective strategy for the candidates — and expected nominees — to adopt. For Trump, that's a no-brainer: To stick to the contention that the lawsuits and criminal cases against him are politically motivated, that the 2020 election, all evidence to the contrary, was stolen from him — a belief some polls suggest close to 70% of Republicans already hold.

For Biden, it means defending his record while also leaning heavily on Trump's excesses.

It's a gamble, said David Dulio, political science professor and director of the Center for Civic Engagement at Oakland University. The persuadable voters, he said, "that coveted middle of the electorate," are more interested in what you will do for them moving forward than what happened before. "As bad as Jan. 6 was," he added, "I think for those middle-of-the-road voters, it's water under the bridge."

On the other hand, he said, Trump is enormously divisive and it's possible that Biden framing him as a looming threat to democracy — something Trump may play into with his remarks about being "a dictator" for a day, if only to close the Southern border, and remarks he later reversed about taking retribution on enemies if he returns to office — could be his best shot of winning reelection.

"I think Joe Biden is the most vulnerable incumbent president I've ever seen and that Republicans are likely going to waste the opportunity," said Dulio. "I have no doubt that the polling that shows Trump ahead in places like Michigan is accurate but I think those numbers are soft."

"Once they start to remind people about their view of Donald Trump," he said, "I see those numbers tightening."

Contact Todd Spangler: tspangler@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @tsspangler

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Biden, Trump rematch likely in 2024: Michigan voters not excited