Americans dread another Biden-Trump showdown in 2024. The New York Times reports that a puny 22 percent of Democrats would be “excited” about Joe Biden’s nomination and a 46-percent plurality of Republicans “would be open” to voting for someone other than Donald Trump.
But what voters face isn’t really a 2020 do-over. That election pitted a hated loudmouth against a stale functionary. The choice was uninspiring but clear. We’re now looking at something worse—a cockeyed zombie reboot with both potential nominees profoundly degraded and on the verge of self-destruction. In 2020, Americans of good conscience could vote for either Trump or Biden on grounds that didn’t necessarily flirt with the dishonorable. That’s no longer true.
In the last election, Trump voters of a certain type might have conceded that Trump’s conduct was as offensive as his ignorance was regrettable. But all told, they could have argued, Trump’s boorishness was outweighed by his sound economic policy, his forceful opposition to the identity-based left, and a results-oriented foreign policy in the Middle East and elsewhere. And the flop Russiagate investigation, they might have pointed out, only proved that the most obvious case against him had become too hysterical to take seriously.
What Trump voters didn’t have to do in 2020 was justify his undermining an American election because he hadn’t yet done that. They didn’t have to account for his being liable for battery and defamation against E. Jean Carroll because that finding was also in the future. There was no need to explain why he hoarded classified documents and reportedly showed them to others on a whim. And they didn’t have to weigh Trump’s perceived good points against convincing details of alleged criminality in a raft of indictments. It was a lot easier to hold your nose and vote for Trump in 2020.
Something similar held for Joe Biden. In 2020, few Biden voters found the former vice president stirring. But that was the point. After four years of Trump tumult, Biden represented an opportunity to make politics uneventful again. And for liberals, he had the added benefit of serving in the beloved Obama administration. Sure, he was clownish and getting on in age, and he had some plagiarism issues in his past. But compared to the day-to-day outlandishness of Trump, none of this even rose to the level of genuine drama.
What Biden voters didn’t have to do in 2020 was account for Hunter Biden’s incriminating laptop because the Biden campaign had temporarily conned them into believing it was Russian disinformation. And they didn’t yet have to deal with the brazenness of that deception. Nor did they have to justify Biden’s lies about being ignorant of Hunter’s foreign business dealings. They didn’t have to reject a growing body of testimony and documentation suggesting Joe Biden might have played a profitable role in his son’s influence-peddling scheme. They certainly didn’t have to reconcile their vote with corroborated whistleblower testimony about Justice Department wrongdoing in his son’s case. There was no need to explain why their man, too, had held on to secret documents after leaving office. Nor, finally, did they have to deny the daily evidence of their own senses, which suggested a president in striking cognitive decline. In 2020, it was a lot easier to cast Joe Biden as conventional.
So, no, this isn’t a do-over. Despite the names being the same, this election is shaping into something utterly new: a bipartisan devaluation of accountability and a moral compromise forced on the American voting public. And as the transgressions of Biden and Trump continue to be exposed, hearing by hearing, trial by trial, the compromise will only become more stark. If the current trajectory of the election holds, and it’s Trump vs. Biden in 2024, every major-party voter will be tarnished in the end. No one championing either man can be said to have clean hands. No one here is righteous.
