2024 is not 2016

[All Mixed Up]

34. 2024 isn't 2016 but it's not like any election we've ever really experienced.

It's the first election since Teddy Roosevelt returned where a former president is running for a new term after being out of office for some time. It's also the first election where the two party candidates are the same as four years earlier since Eisenhower/Stevenson in the 1950s.

Hillary Clinton was not an incumbent and while she had traits of an incumbent, her biggest vulnerability that election was that no one knew what her presidency was going to be like - good or bad. Trump was successful at convincing enough voters that voting for Hillary would be voting for four years of scandals, indictments and crime (hilarious in retrospect).

Truth be told: no one knows how this election is goin to play out.

In fact, in many ways, it's a mix of a bunch of different elections.

It's 2020 solely because it's Trump vs Biden again.

It's 2016 because there's a frustration, and dissatisfaction with the two major party candidates that, like in 2016, we're seeing a stronger than normal third party showing in the polls.

It's 2012 because Biden, like Obama, inherited a mess that bled into his first term and dominated much of the recovery (high unemployment and anemic job growth for Obama and inflation for Biden).

It's 1992 because you have a very unpopular incumbent fighting back a tough perception, which is driving another strong third party candidate.

It's 1980 because, like 1992, you had a very unpopular incumbent fighting economic conditions that aren't necessarily something he can control.

And yet it's none of those because Trump isn't Reagan. Trump isn't Clinton. Trump isn't Romney.

And Trump isn't 2016 Trump. Or even 2020 Trump.

What we know is that both Biden and Trump are extremely vulnerable. The hope here is that, as it often is with reelection campaigns (2004, 2012 especially), the American people concede the current status quo is better than the alternative (for whatever reason).