The bad news is that the rematch between Joe Biden and Donald Trump is now a reality, set for November, barring an extraordinary development or event.
The good news is that it's guaranteed to be the last one. Whoever wins will be term-limited; whoever loses will be age-limited. Whatever adventures in presidential politics await us in 2028 will be conducted by other candidates.
But for 2024, polarity promises to continue for a third national election, likely to produce another razor-thin margin of victory dependent on how a few battleground states are swayed.
It's important to remember, however, that while partisanship among voters is declining--more Americans declare themselves independents--partisanship as a power function in government is as robust as ever.
Independents may well vote for the presidential candidate rather than the party. But once elected, that president will choose Cabinet members, advisers, appointments, judges and endorsements almost exclusively from within the party ranks.
What too many voters tend to forget is that a vote for any partisan candidate is also essentially a vote for the party platform that candidate is affiliated with.
Each party's platform specifically spells out its overall ideological and policy objectives, as well as its principles and positions on domestic and foreign issues and affairs. These are lengthy documents, and their words matter.
A president may, and often does, distance himself from some aspects of his party's platform. But the downstream party faithful--the multitude that is frequently more influential than the Oval Office occupant in the daily life of citizens--are oftentimes truer believers.
The 2024 versions for each party won't be finalized until the formal nomination conventions, but looking back is insightful and gives some indication of trends.
Demonization of Trump by Democrats is a highly suspect tactic, but one the party's leadership appears likely to continue to pursue at their peril. In 2016, the Democratic platform mentioned Trump by name 32 times; in 2020 that number leapt to 120. The former produced a narrow loss, the latter a narrow victory--undoubtedly aided by the pandemic.
The problem with vilifying Trump as a strategy is that it also basically vilifies the 74 million Americans who voted for him in 2020. And while it's true that no court has found any credible evidence of conspiratory or systematic fraud in that election, it's also true that 2020 campaigning and voting was undeniably affected by covid-19 circumstances.
If Biden benefited more from those disruptive effects, that doesn't add up to an election stolen by fraud. There also wasn't any conspiracy to deliberately sabotage the education of tens of millions of students in 2020. But in both instances, the pandemic played a significant role in shaping the outcomes.
That won't be the case this year, and given the real issues affecting voters personally at the present, looking at how party platform priorities line up with solutions may prove more critical.
In many states, Democratic strongholds tend to be centered in high-population-density urban areas. That's also where violent crime has proven most stubborn--despite nationwide declines, murder and other criminal violence persists at abominable rates in cities.
But the 2020 Democratic platform didn't mention the phrase "violent crime" even once, even as the day-in, day-out carnage plays out in too many communities and neighborhoods.
In contrast, the platform had five "hate crime" mentions, and 33 references to"violent" or "violence" involving special interest categories.
The party that can't even verbalize a problem likely won't have much success formulating a strategy to solve it.
The same goes for immigration. In neither 2016 nor 2020 did the Democratic platform include a single mention of "illegal" in regard to the subject. It did use the words "immigration" or "immigrant" 55 times in 2020, but mostly in the context of adding or expanding more rights, benefits, policies or amnesty for them.
Democratic strategists still seem intent on playing the race card at every opportunity, even as it becomes more counterproductive: Trump's advances among minority voters has outpaced previous Republicans.
There's a pronounced progression of race-baiting between the 2016 and 2020 Democratic platforms. In 2016, the terms "Black," "white" and "people of color" appeared a total of only 11 times across the span of 26,000 words. In 2020, that total ballooned to 77. References to the words "racial" and "ethnic" also doubled.
Both parties disproportionately promote rights over accompanying responsibilities. Republicans in 2020 only mentioned "responsibility" in an individual role five times; Democrats gave it a goose egg.
Platforms have typically paid homage to our heritage. The 2020 Republican platform (which was the same as 2016) mentioned the word "Constitution" and its derivatives 80 times, the "Declaration of Independence" seven times and the word "liberty" 24 times.
The 2020 Democratic platform score on those words was 15, zero and zero. The sole "declaration" it mentioned was the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Regaining centerline voters fed up with crime, inflation, racial divisiveness and border insecurity ramifications will be a challenge for Democrats if the 2024 platform follows the far-left/woke/racialized/Trump-bashing tone and trajectory of its 2016-to-2020 acceleration.
My bet? Trump mentions will exceed 200.
Dana D. Kelley is a freelance writer from Jonesboro.