Road to Reelection Just Got More Difficult for Trump

President Biden’s decision to drop out of the 2024 presidential election didn’t exactly send shockwaves through the race, since it had been widely expected for some time. Instead, it merely crystallized a race that had, by and large, been in flux since Biden’s disastrous debate in June.

A cursory look at polling data suggests not much has changed. Trump leads Biden by three percentage points in the national RCP Average. He leads Harris by two. A single point isn’t much of a game-changer.

That, however, overlooks some of the fundamental dynamics of this race. In truth, things just got a lot worse for former President Donald Trump. He’s not necessarily an underdog, but this probably reverts things to the 50-50 outcome we had a few months ago.

Let’s just start with what I think is obvious: Trump is overwhelmingly likely to face off against Vice President Kamala Harris. There are two reasons. First, the Democratic Party is a party built to a large degree on identity, and passing over the first female vice president – who is also African American and Asian – would likely be a bridge too far. The feminist wing of the party has seen Hillary Clinton get passed over in 2008 and lose narrowly in 2016. It will be apoplectic if they pass over Harris.  

Second, the Democrats will actually choose their nominee at the DNC roll call, which is likely to occur in the first week of August, before the convention. Finally, whoever is the party nominee will have to put together a national campaign and campaign staff in short order. That is much, much easier for Harris than for the others. There’s always a chance it won’t be Harris, but it is very much an outside chance.

As for the changed dynamics: It is true that Harris polls comparably close to Biden. The difference, though, is that Harris has an upside. The Trump-Biden race was mostly over at this point. Biden was in a hole against the former president, and it wasn’t clear how he might extricate himself. The DNC offered one opportunity, but it is difficult to see the second debate going any better for him than the first.  

Perhaps most importantly, through his debate performance, Biden had accomplished the one thing he absolutely did not want to accomplish: He made the race a clear referendum on himself rather than a choice between him and Trump.

Harris, on the other hand, has numerous upsides. Her candidacy offers a breath of fresh air to the base, which had been enveloped by a growing sense of doom. She probably helps roll back some of Trump’s gains with black voters, which had been responsible for some of his improvements. 

More importantly, she neutralizes many of Trump’s advantages over Biden. Trump, like Biden, had lost a bit of a step since 2020 (and surely since 2016). Now he simply stands in contrast to Harris. If anything, the “age issue” probably works a bit in reverse now. In a strange way, time works on her side as well. Tearing down a presidential candidate is something that is typically done over the course of months, if not years. Harris will start out with a boomlet of goodwill; in three months, she might still be riding it to some degree. She’ll also be able to pick a running mate with Vance in mind and try to find someone who matches up well.

Finally, although Harris wasn’t a particularly agile debater (recall that her candidacy was effectively ended by Tulsi Gabbard in a 2019 debate), she had her moments. How she fares against Trump is anyone’s guess.  But we knew how Biden was likely to perform. Again, the main point here is just that she has an upside that Biden didn’t possess.

That isn’t to say that this election is now over for Trump, or even that he’s an underdog. Harris is still the vice president in an unpopular administration, and many of the criticisms of her are real. But this election is much more likely to shape up as a choice now, which works to Trump’s detriment. She’s not likely to do worse than Biden would have done, but she could do much better.