I want to preface this post by saying the question asked in the thread title is not rhetorical. I’m not American, I’m Canadian. We do not have anything equivalent to primaries here for choosing the leaders of our political parties. If a Canadian wants a say in who will lead their party (and with it, the ability to have a say in who will be prime minister if the party wins the election) then they have pay to join a party, go to a party convention and then vote in a leadership race, which depending on a political party’s bylaws can only come every once in a very long time.
So as an outsider looking in, the primaries look amazing - the ability for all Americans to have a say in who will be their party’s nominee in the general election for president. So given this amazing opportunity and privilege, why is it a veritable certainty that Biden and Trump are going to be their party’s respective nominees again?
When I look at Trump dominating the primaries so far I don’t really get it. I understand that Trump is extremely popular with his ride or die base, but I’m surprised that there doesn’t seem to be a majority or even sizeable minority of Republican voters that don’t want him and would rather have any other Republican governor, Senator or Congressman running. Leaving aside the issue as to whether or not Trump was a good president or not during his first term it just strikes me as odd that people would think that perhaps someone else without all the baggage might be preferable. Yet Trump is slaughtering his opponents without even lifting a finger, having sat out all the debates. Like am I just underestimating how many republicans are actually all-in on Trump, or is it a case of only Trump’s supporters even participating in primary voting.
Now, as for Biden, I never understood how he got the nomination in 2020 in the first place, but why is he seemingly not being challenged by anyone else from the party this time? His popularity isn’t good, and the guy’s cognitive ability is frankly terrifying in my opinion. It would seem to be that he should be easily beatable by some other democrat politicians, but he doesn’t seem to be facing any major challenges.
So yeah, as a non-American I don’t understand how four years later it’s a veritable certainty that Americans are going to be left with only these two awful candidates to vote for in November. How or why did we get here?
