The voters have seen the movie starring Joe Biden and Donald Trump, and they know how it ends.
If you’re reading this on the day it was written, in the middle of an off-year summer with ages to go before the 2024 campaign begins in earnest, you’re already more engaged in politics than the average American. But to judge by the fundraising numbers so far in this election cycle, even the most plugged-in political observers are overcome with ennui.
From the New York Times this weekend:
Small-dollar contributions are down across the political spectrum. An analysis conducted by Middle Seat, a digital fund-raising firm with an array of Democratic clients, found that small donors had given less money during the first fund-raising period of 2023 than they had in nearly four years — since early 2019.
One of Middle Seat’s partners, Kenneth Pennington, spun this as an encouraging sign for President Joe Biden. Although his campaign’s haul from small-dollar contributors is modest by recent historical standards, he said, it still outpaces the totals raised by the Republican Party’s candidates. But if Biden’s backers were happy with this haul, they might not have also posited a variety of excuses for the incumbent president’s modest showing.
Fundraising has been made more difficult amid efforts by firms like Google and Apple to tighten their data-sharing restrictions. Inflation has put downward pressure on political contributions overall. Democrats are “exhausted” by the number of solicitations they receive. And, of course, it’s still early. “Right now, there is no day-to-day competition combat going on,” said Hollywood executive and Biden campaign co-chair Jeffrey Katzenberg of the president’s fundraising struggles. “It’ll build over time.”
Well, it should, just as Republicans’ coffers will likely fill up as campaign season gets under way in earnest. But the pervasive apathy the upcoming presidential contest has generated isn’t new, and it’s unlikely to change given the primary factor generating the public’s indifference: the two likeliest nominees.
“Neither Biden nor Trump can even claim that a majority of Americans approve of his job performance in office, and so the potential rematch is shaping up to be a battle of who is less unpopular,” read an April report in the Wall Street Journal on the voters’ discontent. “Few voters appear confident that 2024 will be about the issues many of them care about or that the polarization that has gripped the country will abate.”
Indeed, as Jim Geraghty observed today, the election isn’t about issues at all on the Republican side. Few GOP candidates have even bothered to craft and elaborate on an issue set. On the Democratic side, the president’s allies have attempted to fabricate into existence an optimistic, “morning in America”–style message for Joe Biden to hammer on the campaign trail. But that approach is frustrated by the Democratic Party’s fundamental pessimism. They are pessimistic about the health of American democracy, the trajectory of climate change and capitalism, and, maybe most of all, Joe Biden’s fitness to lead their party.
Voters are screaming out for some variety in this contest, but the partisan primary voters to whom the parties are beholden have no interest in satisfying that demand. Indeed, they appear to resent the implication that it is incumbent on them to cater to the desires of the vast American middle. Like so many creatively spent entertainment companies, they’d rather force you to consume warmed-over reboots while casting aspersions on the public’s lack of sophistication.
But if the two parties are convinced that it’s not them but the voters who are the problem and must change, the general public can’t be blamed for tuning out. For months, it has seemed like the likeliest outcome the 2024 primaries will produce is a rematch between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. The voters have seen that movie before, and they know how it ends.