In disbelief and denial, Americans see a repeat of the race between Trump and Biden

President Joe Biden Moves toward the Democratic Party nomination. Former President Donald Trump Can start getting approval from his party within days.

America’s answer: This cannot happen.

Even as the two men head toward a potential coronation in the summer and a rematch in the fall, there is an undercurrent of distrust in the country. Many Republicans see Biden as politically and physically weak enough to believe their party will replace him. Many Democrats can’t imagine Trump winning another nomination while also facing off 91 criminal charges and four criminal trials.

This distrust—which ranges from casual skepticism to denial of a conspiracy—has been underpinned by a year of surveys showing a deeply depressed mood among the population, and has emerged in dozens of interviews and recent statements over the past two weeks. by candidates and political analysts.

“They will change at the last minute,” David Legge, a Republican missionary from Spring Hill, Iowa, said of the Democrats. “They’ve tried just about every other dirty trick.”

Paige Leary of Exeter, New Hampshire, an independent who voted for Biden in 2020 and Democrats in previous presidential elections, also questioned whether Trump would be the Republican nominee.

“The jury is out,” he said. “We don’t know what will happen legally with Trump.”

These conflicting views reflect that suspicions about Biden and Trump differ from party to party.

For Republicans, the Losing faith in the political system is the main theme. The party has lived in the Trump era for nearly a decade, and misinformation and conspiracy theories about Biden’s health and Democratic conspiracies to change him abound in the conservative news media and the political world at large. A favorite theory, and quite unfounded, is that Michelle Obama Democracy will take its place in rebellion.

For their part, Democrats are fed up by the Heartbreaking hope that Trump is not the candidate. They’re crossing their fingers that his criminal trial or efforts to disqualify him from office through the 14th Amendment will keep him off the ballot. Most people have little hope that their nomination can be ruined; They just cling to the belief that the man they hate will somehow disappear.

In the middle, without any assumed position, even There are more casual voters who still don’t pay attention to the elections that are almost a year away They believe that the country is sure to get someone new.

“People from both parties really like it. Aversion to another’s potential candidate” said Charles Franklin, director of the poll at Marquette University Law School. Franklin said he heard so many people say Trump and Biden would be displaced that a poll he conducted this month included a question about it.

“Voters who think: ‘Oh God, let’s not repeat 2020“, they’ll realize we’re watching another episode,” Franklin explained. “Same characters and same plot. “You have to get used to it.”

Internal data from the Biden campaign found that nearly three-quarters of its so-called targeted voting universe do not believe Trump is the Republican nominee. Those voters are a broad group of Americans who don’t engage with the news and don’t currently support the president’s re-election, but the campaign believes they can be convinced to support him.

But Biden and his team are facing wild speculation from Republicans.

“Personally, I don’t think he’s going to make it,” Trump remarked of Biden last month Fox News. Governor of Florida, Ron DeSantisLast week, Fox News hinted at a town hall event that Democrats may have “someone else in his place.”

Commentator Megyn Kelly floated the theory about Obama on her podcast last week, and right-wing host Tomi Lahren said on her online show Wednesday that Democrats would replace him as the California governor. Gavin Newson.

“I continue to predict — as I have for more than two years — that Michelle Obama will be the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee in 2024,” Roger Stone, a former Trump adviser, posted on social media a week before the Iowa caucuses. .

Despite Obama denying any interest in the presidency, online betting house OddsChecker on Friday gave him nearly equal odds of winning the presidential election. Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor who came in third in Iowa on Monday; Both fell behind Trump and Biden. The site ranked Newson fifth, ahead of DeSantis.

Many of these beliefs come from the Trump-inspired right, which has manipulated false claims about the 2020 election in every possible way and is willing to believe that this will happen again in 2024. The common and strange idea is that the Democratic Party is acting at the whim of the “Deep State” and has already drawn up its plan to replace Biden.

Besides, Conspiracy theories include conspiracy theories.

Some Republicans interviewed on the recent presidential campaign stop repeating a decade-old anti-transgender lie about Obama, spread by discredited conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

“I think Michelle Obama — or Michael Obama — will be the Democrats’ choice,” said Secretary Sue Grove of Van Meter, Iowa, who works for Republican lawmakers at the Iowa State Capitol and previously supported entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy for president. Retired “I have heard too rumours About Oprah. “I don’t see any way for Biden to re-enter.”

Far-right online circles are also rife with baseless theories that Democrats may have caused the 81-year-old president’s untimely death. Grove hinted ominously at that idea: “Well, Democrats have had a lot of suspicious deaths, sudden deaths,” he remarked. “There are a lot of suicides, aren’t there?”

No leading Democrat has discussed the possibility of Trump not being the Republican nominee. In fact, according to his advisers, part of Biden’s immediate problem in the polls is that voters who don’t like Trump don’t realize how likely he is to win the nomination.

The left, worried about the prospect of another Trump presidency, has turned to the legal system to stop him, hoping prosecutors will stop his political onslaught. Or if it’s not a criminal jury, then Supreme CourtWhich Democrats hope will confirm two states’ decisions to exclude Trump from voting under the 14th Amendment.

“There seems to be a collective disillusionment with Trump,” said Bill Shafer, a renewable energy executive in Boulder, Colorado, who described himself as a former Republican who voted for Biden in 2020. He said he was unable to get Republicans to accept the nomination for Trump. .

“I turned on Fox news for See ‘How does it feel to live in this world?’” he commented. “It’s a combination National Enquirer and professional wrestling. If you can believe these two things, MAGA is a piece of cake.”

indeed, Biden’s election strategy requires convincing voters that Trump will be on the ballot in November. Campaign officials say Trump’s political standing will improve once the reality of a potential renomination becomes reality with voters no longer following the race so closely.

“This is not fiction,” said Biden campaign spokesman Ammar Moussa. “The president hopes to spend the next ten months reminding the American people just how dangerous Trump and his MAGA agenda are.“And there are voters who wish for some other race to exist by 2024.

Yoram Ariely, a wealthy Democrat who retired from fruit juice importing and exporting, asked SurveyUSA to conduct a survey in October asking voters whether they would prefer Biden to drop his presidential campaign and run for vice president.

With that partisan and ambiguous question, the poll found that 69 percent of 1,024 Democrats believe Biden would do better if he tried to reclaim the position he held for eight years while Barack Obama was president.

© The New York Times 2024