Each of them sat behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, signing bills, appointing judges, bartering with foreign leaders and ordering armed forces into battle. They both know what it’s like to be the most powerful person on the planet.
But the general election duel that appears likely this week after the New Hampshire primary is more than the first contest in a century between two men who have both lived in the White House. It represents the clash of two presidents of completely different countries, the president of blue America and the president of red America.
The looming showdown between President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump goes beyond the binary liberal-conservative divide between two political parties familiar to generations of Americans, unless Nikki Haley pulls off a surprise. It’s at least partly about ideology, yes, but fundamentally it’s also about race, religion, culture, economics, democracy and retribution, and perhaps most of all, identity.
It’s about two very different visions of America, led by two presidents who, aside from their age and the most recent entry on their resumes, couldn’t be more different. Mr. Biden leads an America that he says embraces diversity, democratic institutions and traditional norms and sees government, at its best, as a force for good in society. Mr. Trump leads an America in which he believes the system has been corrupted by dark conspiracies and favors the undeserving over hard-working ordinary people.
Deep divisions in the United States are nothing new; In fact, they can be traced back to the Constitutional Convention and the days between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. But according to some scholars, they have rarely reached today’s levels, where red and blue America are growing further apart geographically, philosophically, financially, educationally and informationally.
Not only do Americans disagree, they live in different realities, each with their 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 seizure of power by a proto-fascist or a legitimate protest that may have gotten out of control but was exploited by the other side and turned patriots into hostages.
The two countries have completely different laws regarding access to abortion and guns. The partisan collapse is so entrenched in 44 states that they are practically already in one America or another when it comes to the fall elections. That means they’re unlikely to see any of the candidates focus primarily on six battleground states that will decide the presidency.
In an increasingly tribal society, Americans describe their differences more personally. According to the Pew Research Center, since Mr. Trump’s election in 2016, the share of Democrats who view Republicans as immoral has risen from 35 percent to 63 percent, while 72 percent of Republicans say the same about Democrats, up from 47 percent. In 1960, about 4 percent of Americans said they would be unhappy if their child married someone from the other party. In 2020 it was almost four in ten. In fact, only about four percent of all marriages today are between a Republican and a Democrat.
“When we think of America today, we make the essential mistake of imagining it as a single nation, a marbled mix of red and blue people,” wrote Michael Podhorzer, a former political director for the AFL-CIO, in an essay last month . “But America was never a 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 in the North following the civil rights legislation of the 1960s. Mr. Trump has transformed the GOP into the party of the white working class, deeply rooted in rural communities and resenting globalization, while Mr. Biden’s Democrats have increasingly become the party of the better-educated and economically better-off who are doing well in the information age .
“Trump was not the cause of this realignment, as it has been developing since the early 1990s,” said Douglas B. Sosnik, who was a White House adviser to President Bill Clinton and 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 of the new 21st century digital economy, and the best indicator of whether you are a winner or a loser, is your level of education.”
The leaders of these two Americas each exercise their power in their own way. As the current occupant of the White House, Mr. Biden has all the pros and cons of being in office. But Mr. Trump has also behaved in some ways as an incumbent — he never admitted his defeat in 2020 and the majority of his supporters believe, according to polls, that he, not Mr. Biden, is the legitimate president.
Even without formal office, Mr. Trump has set the agenda for Republicans in Washington and state capitals. He supported the internal coup that toppled President Kevin McCarthy last year after he struck a spending deal with Mr. Biden. He advises current speaker Mike Johnson on how to deal with the stalemate over border policy and security assistance to Ukraine.
Many elected Republicans who once opposed Mr. Trump have, with notable exceptions, rushed to support him in recent weeks as his claim for the party’s presidential nomination has become all but complete. So it’s hard to imagine a major political deal being struck in Washington this year without Mr. Trump’s approval, or at least his assent.
The current situation has no exact analogue in American history. Only twice before have two presidents competed against 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 attempt to unseat his successor and estranged protégé, President William Howard Taft, but paved the way for Democratic candidate Woodrow Wilson’s victory.
None of these contests reflected the epochal moment that scholars and policy experts see this year. When historians look for parallels, they often point to the period before the Civil War, when an industrialized North and an agrarian South disagreed over slavery. While secession is far-fetched today, the fact that it still comes up from time to time in conversations between Democrats in California and Republicans in Texas shows how disconnected many Americans feel from one another.
“Whenever I mention the 1850s, everyone thinks we’re going to have a civil war,” said Sean Wilentz, a Princeton historian who was among a group of scholars who recently met with Mr. Biden. “I’m not saying that. It’s not predictive. But when institutions weaken or change or transform as they have, one can gain perspective from history. I think people still need to understand how unusual the situation is.”
Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump are both historically unpopular presidents. Mr. Biden begins his reelection year with an approval rating of just 39 percent in a Gallup poll, the lowest of any president-elect at that point, dating back to Dwight D. Eisenhower. The two are essentially equal when it comes to endorsement, which is a slightly different question: 41 percent express positive feelings about Mr. Biden, compared to 42 percent about Mr. Trump.
But they represent different constituencies. Mr. Biden is viewed favorably by 82 percent of Democrats but only 4 percent of Republicans. Mr. Trump is viewed favorably by 79 percent of Republicans but only 6 percent of Democrats.
In Mr. Sosnik’s latest analysis, Mr. Biden begins the general election with 226 likely Electoral College votes and Mr. Trump with 235. To get to the 270 needed to win, one of them will have to collect some of the 77 votes in one half a dozen states up for grabs: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Since Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump have both served as presidents, Americans already know what they think about them. This makes it harder for both to define their opponents in public the way President George W. Bush defined John F. Kerry in 2004 and President Barack Obama defined Mitt Romney in 2012.
But the wild cards this year remain unique – an 81-year-old incumbent who is already the oldest president in American history versus a 77-year-old predecessor who is accused of 91 crimes in four different indictments. No one can say with certainty how this dynamic will play out over the next 285 days, which Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump are already viewing as a presidential campaign for the general election.
And while voters may already have an 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 one or the other’s victory. Rejection, unrest, further division and even violence all seem possible.
As Mr. Wilentz said, “Things are not normal here. I think that’s important for people to understand.”
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2024-01-25 10:01:56
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