The Groundhog Day Election
Why America is heading toward a choice it doesn't want
If there’s one thing Americans can agree on, it’s that they don’t want to see another election where Donald Trump faces off against Joe Biden.
And I mean they really don’t want to see it.
In January 2022, seven in ten Americans said they didn’t want a sequel to the 2020 election. That sentiment didn’t change in the summer of 2022. Or in 2023. Or ten days ago, when two-thirds of voters told pollsters they want different candidates.
The disgust over a Trump-Biden rematch is so deep that many voters cling to the belief that it won’t happen—that we won’t wake up on Election Day 2024 and, like Bill Murray in the film Groundhog Day, find ourselves trapped in Election Day 2020.
The Biden campaign’s internal data reportedly shows that nearly three-quarters of their potential supporters believe Trump won’t be the Republican nominee, while unfounded theories circulate on the right about Biden being replaced by Michelle Obama.
But if there were going to be significant obstacles to Biden or Trump being renominated we would have seen them by now. A weightier presence than Dean Phillips—who finished a far distant third in Saturday’s South Carolina primary—would have emerged to challenge Biden. Nikki Haley, the last remaining Trump challenger, would be polling higher than 25% in her home state.
It’s always possible that something unexpected will happen. The Supreme Court could declare Trump ineligible under the Fourteenth Amendment. Death or debilitating illness could strike either the septuagenarian Republican or the octogenarian Democrat.
But these are not things you can predict, and if they were to happen it would be despite the forces propelling us toward a rematch. Barring something unforeseen, America is going to get the matchup it does not want. We are heading for a replay of 2020.
You would think that if the overwhelming share of voters want other candidates, the parties would respond accordingly and neither Biden nor Trump would be coasting to re-nomination. Why isn’t that happening?
We can answer this question by going back to basics.
Even though Joe Biden is president, we are still living in the Trump era. For the past eight years, our politics has been uprooted by profound generational change and the violent Trumpist reaction against it. That remains the case today.
Two generations of Americans, Millennials and Gen Z—the oldest of whom are now in their early 40s—are starting to indelibly alter political power while redefining what it means to be an American. Racially and ethnically diverse, less religious, more socially tolerant, and more progressive than their elders, they are on the cusp of becoming a decisive political force.
This has been coming on for decades. But over the past few years, the emerging generations have grown large enough to see in their field of vision a time when they will hold the balance of power in America. As it approaches, Millennials and Gen Z are challenging the place held by traditionally privileged groups.
Some members of those groups are pushing back. Largely the beneficiaries of traditional power arrangements, they want nothing to do with the world the rising generations are creating. They see it as a world that will elevate others at their expense, whether they are immigrants or people of color or religious minorities.
To prevent this from happening, they have to stave off what generational change is bringing. They need to halt the powerful demographic tide that feels like it’s threatening to wash them away.
Donald Trump is their voice and their hope. He channels their grievances, projects what they believe is strength, and promises to prevent changes that in truth no one can stop. In his 2024 iteration, Trump is openly promising to cast aside democracy in order to protect them—tacitly acknowledging we have reached the point where the vision of America his voters want would go down to defeat if we put it to a vote.
Ironically, we’re about to put it to a vote. Trump has to go through a democratic process in order to claim the dictatorial powers he wants and his supporters crave.
The rest of the country may not have any interest in the reactionary MAGA agenda, but Trump’s base is intense enough and large enough to ensure Trump will get the Republican nomination, while Republican elites fearful of alienating his voters continue to prop him up.
This is the driving force behind the 2024 election, and has been the driving force in every election since the Obama years.
So, of course, Democrats are responding to it.
Democratic party elites have rallied around Joe Biden as the one person with a record of success running against Trump. They’re aware of his low approval ratings, but they believe with good reason that when voters eventually shake off their denial and face the choice they don’t want, Biden will rally more voters to his side just like he did in 2020, when he was elected by a margin of seven million.
Biden also has a strong record to take to voters, which at this point is still one of the best-kept secrets in politics. But that’s for the campaign to reveal. The primary reason Biden’s party rallied behind him despite his low job approval is because of the risks involved in nominating someone without a history of defeating Trump.
Joe Biden is a bridge between the center-right America of earlier decades, with its traditional values and power arrangements, and the diverse, progressive America that is still under construction. Beneath that bridge runs a river of resistance, a current strong enough to threaten the shaky pillars of the democratic system that hold it up.
In November 2024, we will decide whether to bolster the bridge or fall into the angry rapids below. Just like we did in 2020.
Like Bill Murray waking up every day on February 2, we are destined to relive the choice between Trump and Biden, between authoritarianism and democracy, until we succumb to the pull of a waning America or firmly establish a new one in its place.
This is an unpleasant reality but it is the reality of our time.
That bridge has to hold for as long as it takes to get to the other side.