The looming battle between two presidents and two Americas
Each of them has sat behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, signed bills, appointed judges, bartered with foreign leaders and ordered armed forces into battle. They both know what it's like to be the most powerful person on earth.
Still, the electoral battle that seems likely after this week's New Hampshire primary represents more than the first battle in a century between two men who have both lived in the White House. It represents the clash between two presidents of completely different countries, the president of Blue America versus the president of Red America.
The looming showdown between President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump, assuming Nikki Haley can't pull off a surprise, goes beyond the binary liberal-conservative split of two political parties familiar to generations of Americans. It's at least partly about ideology, yes, but fundamentally also about race and religion and culture and economics and democracy and retribution and perhaps most of all about identity.
It's about two wildly different visions of America led by two presidents who, aside from their age and the most recent entry on their resumes, could hardly be more different. Mr. Biden leads an America that, as he sees it, embraces diversity, democratic institutions and traditional norms, that views government at its best as a force for good in society. Mr. Trump leads an America where, in his view, the system is corrupted by dark conspiracies and where the undeserving are favored over hard-working ordinary people.
Deep divisions in the United States are not new; indeed, they can be traced back to the Constitutional Convention and the days of John Adams versus Thomas Jefferson. But according to some scholars, they have rarely reached the levels we see today, as Red and Blue America move further apart geographically, philosophically, financially, educationally, and informationally.
Americans not only disagree with each other, they live in different realities, each with its own self-reinforcing internet and media ecosphere. The attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021 was either an outrageous insurrection in service of an unconstitutional power grab by a proto-fascist, or a legitimate protest that may have gotten out of hand but was exploited by the other side into patriotism. into hostages.
The two countries have radically different laws on access to abortion and guns. The partisan divide is so entrenched in 44 states that they are effectively already in one America or the other when it comes to the fall elections. That means they will hardly see any of the candidates, who will mainly focus on six battleground states that will decide the presidency.
In an increasingly tribal society, Americans describe their differences more personally. Since Mr. Trump's election in 2016 according to the Pew Research Centerthe share of Democrats who view Republicans as immoral has grown from 35 percent to 63 percent, while 72 percent of Republicans say the same about Democrats, an increase from 47 percent. In 1960, about 4 percent of Americans said they would not like their child to marry someone from the opposite party. By 2020, that had grown to almost four in ten. Today, only about 4 percent of all marriages are between a Republican and a Democrat.
“When we think of America today, we make the essential mistake of imagining it as one nation, a marbled mix of red and blue people,” said Michael Podhorzer, former political director of the AFL-CIO. wrote in an essay last month. “But America has never been one nation. We are a federated republic of two nations: the Red Nation and the Blue Nation. This is not a metaphor; it is a geographical and historical reality.”
The current divide reflects the most significant political realignment since Republicans captured the South and Democrats captured the North after the civil rights legislation of the 1960s. Mr. Trump has transformed the Republican Party into the party of the white working class, deeply rooted in rural communities and outraged by globalization, while Mr. Biden's Democrats have increasingly become the party of the better-educated and economically better off, who have done well in the information age.
“Trump did not cause this realignment, as it has been building up since the early 1990s,” said Douglas B. Sosnik, an adviser in President Bill Clinton's White House who studies political trends. But “his 2016 victory and his presidency have accelerated these trends. And this realignment is largely based on the winners and losers in the new digital economy of the 21st century, and the best predictor of whether you are a winner or a loser is your level of education.”
The leaders of these two Americas each wield power in their own way. As the current occupant of the White House, Mr. Biden has all the advantages and disadvantages of an established position. But Mr. Trump has also, in some ways, behaved like a sitting president — he has never conceded his 2020 defeat and the majority of his supporters, polls show, believe he, not Mr. Biden, is the legitimate president .
Even without formal office, Trump has set the agenda for Republicans in Washington and state capitals. He encouraged the internal coup that toppled Speaker Kevin McCarthy last year after he struck a spending deal with Mr. Biden. He is advising the current speaker, Mike Johnson, on how to deal with the impasse over border policy and security assistance for Ukraine.
Many elected Republicans who once opposed Mr. Trump, with notable exceptions, have rushed to support him in recent weeks as his claim to the party's presidential nomination becomes nearly complete. As a result, it is difficult to imagine any major policy agreement in Washington this year without Mr. Trump's approval, or at least his agreement.
The current situation has no exact analogy in American history. Only twice before have two presidents faced each other. In 1892, former President Grover Cleveland won a rematch against President Benjamin Harrison. In 1912, former President Theodore Roosevelt lost a third-party bid to depose his successor and estranged protégé, President William Howard Taft, but paved the way for the victory of the Democratic candidate, Woodrow Wilson.
None of these contests reflected the kind of groundbreaking moment that scholars and political professionals are seeing this year. When historians look for parallels, they often point to the period before the Civil War, when an industrializing North and an agricultural South were divided over slavery. Although secession is far-fetched these days, the fact that it does come up from time to time in conversations between Democrats in California and Republicans in Texas shows how alienated many Americans feel from each other.
“Every time I mention the 1850s, everyone thinks we're going to have a Civil War,” said Sean Wilentz, a Princeton historian who was part of a group of scholars who recently met with Mr. Biden. 'I'm not saying that. It's not predictive. But when institutions are weakened, changed or transformed as they have been, you can gain perspective from history. I don't think people yet understand how abnormal the situation is.”
Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump are both historically unpopular presidents. Mr. Biden opens his re-election year with an approval rating of just 39 percent in the Gallup polls, the lowest of all elected presidents at this point we return to Dwight D. Eisenhower. The two are essentially tied on preference, a slightly different question: 41 percent express positive feelings about Mr. Biden, compared to 42 percent about Mr. Trump.
But they represent different voters. Mr. Biden does rated positively by 82 percent of Democrats, but only 4 percent of Republicans. Trump is viewed positively by 79 percent of Republicans, but only 6 percent of Democrats.
In Mr. Sosnik's latest analysis, Mr. Biden starts the general election with 226 likely votes in the Electoral College and Mr. Trump with 235. To get to the 270 needed for victory, one of them will take part of the need to get 77 votes. are up for grabs in six states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Because Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump have both been presidents, Americans already know what they think of them. That will make it harder for both to define his opponent to the public the way President George W. Bush defined John F. Kerry in 2004 and President Barack Obama defined Mitt Romney in 2012.
But this year's wild cards remain unique nonetheless: an 81-year-old sitting president who is already the oldest president in American history, versus a 77-year-old predecessor who faces 91 felonies in four separate criminal indictments. No one can say for sure how this dynamic will play out over the next 285 days, which Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump already view as the presidential campaign for the general election.
And while voters may already have some idea of how the winner will operate in the White House over the next four years, it is not at all clear how a divided country will respond to a victory for one or the other. Rejectionism, disruption, further schism and even violence all seem possible.
As Mr. Wilentz said, “Things are not normal here. I think it's important that people understand it.”