Both Biden and Trump will be Lame Duck Presidents in 2025, is there a difference?

Part I of a series: "Why the GOP should be rooting for Trump to lose"

I’m back…some work-life and health issues have more or less resolved themselves.

How often will I being publishing here? I do not know, but it will either to publish more often in a shorter form or do less but in a longer form. Time going forward will likely answer that query.

A colleague at work, upon my opining that electing Donald Trump to another presidential term would be a mistake as he would be entering office a lame duck president, asked or retorted “Won’t Joe Biden also be a lame duck President?”

The answer is not an obvious “yes” with some buckled knee “mea culpas” thrown in.

In the history of presidents, the US has had exactly one true lame duck —Rutherford B. Hayes. After losing the popular vote, Hayes finagled an Electoral College victory to make him President in 1877. The cost of getting the required Electoral vote majority after losing by over 250,000 votes to Governor Samuel Tilden of New York — agreeing to not run for reelection.

Prior to the election of 1876, only two Presidents did not pursue relection: James K Polk and James Buchanan.

Since the Hayes-Tilden race in 1876, only one incumbent President did not pursue relection and/or a full term. Chester A. Arthur refused political entreaties to seek a full term whereas every elected President after Hayes sought a second term (with FDR seeking a 3rd and 4th) or the incumbent sought a full term in office (Teddy Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Harry Truman, LBJ, and Gerald Ford) after the death/resignation of their predecessor.

So what’s the difference?

There is the fluidity factor, i.e. incumbency means something. A reelected Biden does not have to have a transition process nor vet nominees for polical appointments nor roll out his agenda with a new budget. President Biden’s Administration is already in place and reelections are fairly seamless affairs in US politics.

A President-elect Trump, despite having served before, will have to rerun the god-awful show of inexperience, idiocy, and idolatry he presented to America between the 2016 election and his 2017 inauguration. And given how many Old Guard Republicans and Mainstream conservatives, who were either sidelined or vanquished in Trump’s first term, his status as a lame duck will be etched in stone before Trump even takes the oath of office. That is to say: the very people who protected Trump was being viewed as an inept incompetent belong the dwindling faction of the GOP that believes in governance — and it’s obvious with the election about 8 months away, they won’t be invited to the table in a second Trump term.

There is also a shortened and precarious 2028 GOP nomination calendar created by Trump being eligible to serve only one 4 year term. If you fear Trump refusing to abdicate his position as President on Janary 20, 2029 as a Democrat, imagine being in the shoes of a GOP presidential hopeful in 2027 or 2028. Juggling lit sticks of dynamite while riding a unicycle on an ice rink would be an easier task.

Upon reelection, Joe Biden can sit back and take the same tack that Reagan, Clinton, G.W Bush, and Obama all took — watch the circus on the opposition’s side or applaud the parade on your side. Trump will not let anyone in the GOP upstage him — he will literally undermine the GOP’s chances in 2028 by his mere presence in the White House.

By 2028, demographics will demand the GOP shift to the real world political center to counter what will be a likely shift in the Democratic Party from Center-Left goverance to a far more progressive political agenda. Trumpism, however it is defined, is going eschew the pragmatism of the GOP repositioning itself as a Center-Right Party and will continue its slide away from the reality of being electable — all to please Donald Trump.

Its worth noting that Trump, if elected, will likely fall into the shoes of John Q. Adams, Rutherford Hayes, Benjamin Harrison, George W Bush in 2000, and Trump himself in 2016 — failing to win the popular vote is an almost insurmountable political crutch.

It took 9/11 to barely reelect Bush in 2004.

Both John Quincy Adams and Benjamin Harrison were easily beaten in their relection bids (both by their orginal opponents).

And the GOP struggled mightily to keep the White House in 1880. James Garfield, Republican nominee, won the popular vote by less than 2,000 votes. Garfield’s razor thin victory brought in a equally thin GOP majority in the House and set up devastating midterm results in 1882.

Given the political losses the GOP endured between 2017 and 2021 with Donald Trump able to run for reelection, it’s highly unlikely the Republican Party will fare better with a lame duck Trump going forward.