Despite their political differences, Americans seem to agree on one thing: they don’t want Joe Biden or Donald Trump to be on the ballot in the 2024 presidential election. According to recent polls, up to 70 percent of Americans want Biden to decline to run for reelection, while over 60 percent hope Trump will retire. However, primary voters within both major political parties seem to have other ideas. Biden is currently leading the Democrats’ primary by 50 points, while Trump is winning the Republicans’ by between 30 and 40 points. This is despite the public’s weariness with both candidates, widespread disapproval, and concerns about age, honesty, and criminal conduct.
The idea behind the primary system is that everyday voters are better placed to choose appealing political candidates than party elites. However, the current situation suggests otherwise. If primary voters are supposed to be nimble in responding to a cacophony of information, they don’t seem to be showing it. Both parties appear determined to interpret popularity as weakness, competence as vapidity, and comity as perfidy. In other words, to win is to betray, and to persuade is to surrender.
This trend is similar to what we see in many of America’s major corporations, where staff, corporate executives, and advertising firms have abandoned conventional aims such as profitability and market share in favor of fringe ideologies that nobody likes. Companies such as Bud Light, the Walt Disney Company, and Target have come to disdain the products they sell and loathe the people they serve. Similarly, the Republican Party seems determined to waste the friendly political winds at its back by foisting an ensemble cast of strange and unlikable candidates upon a baffled general public. Winning is not the aim; damn the torpedoes, this is show business now.
