A Trump-Clinton Analogy That Could Give Biden Comfort

There’s no precedent for a presidential candidate to face doubts as serious over age and mental acuity as President Joe Biden faces today.

But there is precedent for a candidate to face similarly serious, fundamental doubts about handling the job of president. It’s a precedent that lends itself to a somewhat peculiar but still useful comparison to today.

That precedent is Donald Trump in 2016.

The 2016-era concerns about Trump’s fitness for office, as reflected in polling, suggested that a majority of voters harbored the most basic doubts about his ability to do the job. In Biden’s case, those doubts have stemmed from his age. For Trump, it was his lack of experience and unpresidential temperament.

The doubts about Trump set the stage for a volatile campaign, as a crucial segment of traditional Republican-leaning voters recoiled at their party’s nominee in preelection polls. At times, Trump’s percentage of support among Republican-leaning voters was as low as the 70s, and it was in the 80s as the election approached. Today, Biden finds himself in a somewhat similar position, as defections among Black, Hispanic and younger voters have given Trump a narrow lead in the early polls.

Trump’s weakness among Republican-leaning voters wasn’t exclusively because they questioned whether he could do the job effectively. Many Republicans were repelled by his insults against ethnic groups or John McCain’s military service, or his treatment of women — including the “Access Hollywood” tape. Many opposed his views on trade, immigration and foreign policy. Others doubted his commitment to conservative causes, like opposition to abortion rights. Similarly, many traditionally Democratic voters are skeptical of Biden’s handling of the economy or the Israeli-Hamas conflict. But as with Biden and the issue of age today, Trump’s inexperience and unpresidential conduct were a major aspect of their misgivings.

With these challenges, Trump might have lost by a wide margin had his opponent not been Hillary Rodham Clinton — a candidate under criminal investigation (later dropped) who polls showed was nearly as disliked as he was. She probably would have been an underdog against a more typical Republican, and she was also deeply vulnerable to Trump’s populist critique of establishment-backed policies on immigration, foreign policy and trade.

Together, her weaknesses and those of Trump left the race in a strange spot. An unusually high share of voters said they were undecided or would support a minor party candidate, with Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party candidate, peaking near 10%. Trump’s populist pitch yielded huge gains among white voters without a college degree, but she maintained a modest lead by the margin of defections among Republican-leaning voters. As I put it on Nov. 2, 2016:

“(Trump) hasn’t been able to capitalize on strength among white working-class voters in part because of his weakness among Republican-leaning voters in the same states.

“It’s a strange position forTrump. In a way, he’s already done the hard part: He has pulled off what Republicans have long wished for in places like Green Bay, Wisconsin, and Scranton, Pennsylvania, but he’s not even approaching traditional Republican benchmarks in the suburbs around Philadelphia and Milwaukee.

“This could quickly change if he could do the easy part, consolidating Republican-leaning voters — adding to his strength among white working-class voters.”

In the end, Trump was able to do the easy part: Republican-leaning voters consolidated around him in the final days of the race. Trump’s recovery among those voters was not entirely surprising. Clinton did try to appeal to Republican-leaning voters, but as a Democrat whom Republicans had opposed for decades, she was poorly suited to the task.

At the same time, there was nothing inevitable about Trump’s win. These late-deciding voters did not necessarily want to support him . They weren’t “shy” Trump supporters who were guarding a closely held secret. According to polling, they did not like him, did not support him, did not want to vote for him, and in many cases made the choice only when they felt they absolutely had to — in the voting booth. And up until they decided otherwise, they could have just as easily stayed home or voted for Johnson. Indeed, millions of voters made exactly that choice.

Does every detail of this story match 2024? No, not at all, but there’s a lot that resembles the polling today. As with Trump in 2016, the polls show that a clear majority of voters do not believe Biden has what it takes to be an effective president. Partly as a result, he faces those surprising defections from Democratic-leaning constituencies.

Against a typical Republican, Biden might be a clear underdog. But as luck would have it, Biden appears to have his Clinton: Trump himself, an opponent under criminal investigation (in this case many investigations). Many voters again find themselves upset with the choice at hand, and many appear willing to back minor party candidates in the early polls.

For now, Trump leads because he’s faring better among young, Black and Hispanic voters than he did four years ago. Just as Clinton was not a great fit for the Republican-leaning voters who seemed undecided, Trump is not the perfect candidate to win these voters. It’s clear they don’t like Biden, but will they really vote for Trump or a minor party in the end? If Trump leads the polling to the end, we might not know until Election Day.

On this point, Trump’s win in 2016 represents a decent but still mixed precedent for Biden. On the one hand, being seen as unfit for the presidency in 2016 was not necessarily disqualifying at the ballot box. Voters may have had deep reservations about Trump, but many Republicans ultimately cast a ballot for him against a detested Democrat like Clinton. This time around, Biden will hope for a similarly intense dislike of his own opponent.

On the other hand, Trump really did suffer an electoral penalty for his various shortcomings. In the end, he bled significant, if not quite decisive, support among Republican-leaning voters. Minor party candidates like Johnson and Evan McMullin, a conservative anti-Trump candidate, received an unusually large share of the vote. Longtime Republican suburbs really did lurch toward Democrats. Trump’s problems were patently clear, and he could have easily lost a very winnable election under slightly different circumstances (in fact, he lost the popular vote).

That’s clearly not what Democrats wanted a Biden-versus-Trump rematch to look like a year ago, even if it might count as a somewhat favorable precedent given the polling today.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .