OPINION:
It’s not often you see Americans agree on anything these days, but it seems we’ve struck gold (or fool’s gold, depending on how you look at it).
A whopping 63% of voters agree that both President Biden and former President Donald Trump are “embarrassing,” according to a new Pew survey. Even one-third of each candidate’s supporters feel the same way. That’s right, 37% of Biden supporters and 33% of Trump supporters find their own candidates “embarrassing.”
Now, let’s talk about Mr. Biden’s mental dexterity — or the perceived lack thereof. After the first presidential debate on June 27, this topic became hotter than Washington in July. Just 24% of voters think the phrase “mentally sharp” fits Mr. Biden well — down from 53% in 2021 — compared with Mr. Trump’s 58%. Worse still, Mr. Biden’s rating on mental sharpness has nosedived by 6 points since January, and it’s nowhere near what it was in 2020.
Regarding honesty and empathy, Mr. Biden edges out Mr. Trump, but not by much. On the meanness scale, Mr. Trump wins (or loses?) hands down, with 64% of voters calling him mean-spirited, compared with 31% for Mr. Biden.
Over the past year, Pew surveys have consistently shown widespread discontent with American politics. Their new survey is no exception. Check out these hot takes on the 2024 campaign:
• 87% say this campaign doesn’t exactly fill them with patriotic pride.
• 76% feel important policy debates are left hanging.
• 68% think the campaign is a total downer.
Both candidates are seen as flawed, just in different ways. Nearly 70% of voters give the thumbs-down to their presidential options, according to the poll. Majorities from all walks of life are dissatisfied with their presidential picks.
It’s not new that Americans dislike both candidates. The group, known as “double haters,” has reached its highest percentage at this stage in the past 10 presidential election campaigns, according to another Pew poll in June. The number has almost doubled since 2020 — to 25%.
In addition, 67% of “double haters” believe Mr. Trump should end his campaign in the wake of his felony conviction, according to a recent ABC News/Ipsos poll. That bodes better for Mr. Biden than for Mr. Trump. “They may dislike both candidates, but the intensity on Trump’s negative is higher,” Democratic pollster Jefrey Pollock told Axios.
It gets worse. Another poll found that another whopping percentage (80%!) of Americans agree with the statement that “the country is spiraling out of control.”
Mr. Trump is trying to lower his hate rating and bring in some independents. He ordered the Republican National Committee to alter its platform on abortion (for the first time in 40 years, it doesn’t call for a nationwide ban). Likewise on same-sex marriage: The platform no longer says “traditional marriage” between “one man and one woman.”
And despite a lengthy push by top Democrats to oust Mr. Biden, it appears the president has survived and will eventually be the party’s nominee. Mr. Biden said last week that he is “firmly committed to staying in this race, to running this race to the end, and to beating Donald Trump.”
While nearly every poll shows Mr. Trump with a lead, he is “a historically weak candidate,” a fact that is getting lost amid the Democratic Party’s “civil war,” Oklahoma State University politics professor Seth McKee said on a local radio station. “He’s historically weak, and the fact that someone who had one of the worst debate performances in American history showed hardly any movement in terms of support … it screams that Trump is a terribly weak candidate.”
Still, for an incumbent, Mr. Biden is an unbelievably weak candidate. His approval rating has often been in the low 30s, and even now, 110 days until the election, he stands at 38% job approval — “well below the 48%+ threshold all reelected incumbents in the modern era have had at the time of the election,” Gallup reported last week.
No matter how you slice it, most Americans on Election Day are not going to vote for the candidate they want to be president. Instead, they will vote against the one they don’t want to be president. And that’s no way to run a country.
• Joseph Curl covered the White House and politics for a decade for The Washington Times. He can be reached at josephcurl@gmail.com and on X @josephcurl.
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