Washington Wednesday: Why Trump and Biden need each other

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s Wednesday the 13th of December, 2023.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

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[PAUSE]

It’s Washington Wednesday, but we begin in Boston.

AUDIO: [James Taylor at fundraiser]

You’ve got a friend in President Biden. That was the message from singer-songwriter James Taylor at a recent fundraiser for the president.

Biden’s campaign had $91 million dollars cash on hand as of the third quarter of 20-23. That’s a new high-water mark for a Democratic presidential candidate at this stage of the campaign.

EICHER: But during a closed-door donor event, he admitted that if Donald Trump were not running for president, well, neither would Biden acknowledging his 81 years.

Trump currently has a campaign war chest half the size of Biden’s, in part because he’s still in competition with other Republicans.

Even still, he’s taken a slim lead of 2 percentage points over Biden in an average of recent national polls, and a commanding lead in the primaries.

Joining us now to talk about what is looking more and more like an eventual rematch of 2020 is Kyle Kondik. He is an elections analyst and director of communications at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics

KYLE KONDIK, GUEST: Good morning.

REICHARD: Kyle, before we talk about the strengths and weaknesses of Trump and Biden’s campaigns, I just want to recognize the weariness many people feel about the coming election. A few years ago around the run up to the 2016 election, we got a call from a listener who just dreads election years…and all the hype and vitriol and fear-mongering that goes along with it. And now the mainstream media message about 2024 is that a Trump-Biden rematch is inevitable…and so the politics of past elections will push out more pressing concerns and better candidates.

Kyle, why should Christian, conservative, church-going, family-oriented people care about electoral politics going into the primaries starting next month? Do you have any inspiration for us?

KONDIK: Well, I mean, look, it's ultimately up to the people to decide who the President is going to be. And, you know, if you want to have some sort of say in it, you need to register to vote and participate, however you may want to do that. And, you know, look, we have a two party system, it's very difficult for third party candidates to get much traction. You know, that's the system we have. Sometimes people have to decide between two choices that they don't necessarily like. But if you think about it, for probably not that much amount of time for most people, it's probably clear as to which candidate is closer to them. And so they make a choice that way. You know, it's easy to say, Oh, well, I wish there were different people. Well, first of all, we are having primaries on both sides. So like, whatever you think of the challengers, particularly to Biden, the challengers are fairly minor. You know, they're more credible people running the Republican side. But you know, you can participate in your own states, you know, caucus or primary or what have you and participate. But people often do and are totally entitled to complain about politics, but you probably have more or more entitled to complain if you actually participate.

REICHARD: Yeah, some skin in the game. Well, let’s get to it. As we mentioned, Trump appears to be on track to run away with the nomination. He enjoys a nearly 50-point lead over Ron DeSantis who is in second place.

If we go back to the beginning of 20-23, it really did look like this might be a two-person race for the GOP nomination. DeSantis was riding high on wins in the midterm election in Florida. And at one point in January, Trump and DeStantis were only 13 points apart. … What happened?

KONDIK: I think it's a lot of things. You know, I think at times Trump can dip with Republicans if there's some sort of short term problem. And so I would describe January 6th and the pretty terrible end to Trump's presidency as part of that. I also think of the 2022 midterms, Republicans did poorly and, frankly, a lot of candidates that Trump backed did poorly in that general election. But the thing is, is that it's like pushing on a balloon, like you have to keep pressure on it to change its shape. But once you let go it kind of restores back to where it was. And for Republicans and Trump, I just think that if there's not that continual pressure put on Trump, and a reminder of some of his downsides, what Republicans kind of like about him or the enemies he has that they like him having or all of that, I think just the support kind of regenerates. You know, it's easy to say it's easy to sort of pick at the campaign strategies of Ron DeSantis, or other Republicans, but it may just be that no one is capable of really toppling Trump at the head of the party. As of now, so many of the candidates themselves have decided not to go, you know, whole hog in terms of going after Trump because they feel like it does more harm than good. But it also speaks to their own fairly weak position within the nomination fight.

REICHARD: We mentioned Trump’s edge over Biden in recent polls. But … according to some polls, he isn’t the Republican who fares best against the incumbent. That is Nikki Haley.

There are a few recent polls that actually gave Haley a double-digit lead over Biden. How much mileage do you think she might be able to get out of the electability argument?

KONDIK: Well, look, it's ultimately going to be a hard one to make on the Republican side in part because Trump himself is doing okay. And the polls are probably better than he did in 2016 and 2020. And you know, when people are asked about the electability question on the Republican side, a lot of people support Trump and if you support someone, you naturally are going to say that they're electable. And I think that's what you're seeing in the polls and what people say about Trump. You know the other thing is that we know that Trump would react poorly to not being the nominee, and he has no inherent loyalty to his party. So if he's not leading it, and so I my guess is that he would probably try to undermine whoever the nominee would be, which I think, again, I think elected Republicans would worry about, so it may be that the numbers for someone like Haley or even DeSantis against Biden don't necessarily reflect what effect you know, having to run both against Biden but also frankly against a disappointed, and angry non-nominee Trump would be. Now that said, you could also see the potential upside in that, both Biden and Trump have fairly poor national favorability numbers. There's, you know, some attraction potentially on both sides to picking someone who's different. It's just that you don't necessarily know at the end of the day if that replacement candidate would be better than Biden or Trump, because, you know, polls at this point are not necessarily predictive, and we don't know how the campaign would turn out.

REICHARD: What do you think each campaign believes is its strongest winning message? And do you agree those are winning messages?

KONDIK: I mean, I really think that probably the strongest message for either candidate is the weakness of the other. You know, I think they're both kind of dependent upon running against one another. And I think the campaign is going to be highly negative. And it's going to be a campaign just like 2016, where you think of politicians want, they want to be in the limelight, they want attention. This is a campaign where I think if you're Biden or Trump, you probably don't want attention, you probably want to be as disciplined as you possibly can be, which is, frankly, a challenge for both of these candidates in different kinds of ways, historically speaking, and you want the focus to be more on the problems of the other person.

REICHARD: Bring this all home for us. And I’ll ask the same about Trump in a moment. As succinctly as possible, I’d like for you to finish this sentence: President Biden wins reelection IF …

KONDIK: Donald Trump is a weak candidate whose problems predominate in the fall.

REICHARD: Okay, and Trump reclaims the White House IF …

KONDIK: Joe Biden is a weak candidate, and Biden's problems predominate in the fall. I do think this is in both cases. I think it's the path of victory for one relies on the weakness of the other.

REICHARD: Kyle Kondik is with the University of Virginia Center for Politics. Kyle, thanks so much!

KONDIK: Thank you.

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