When you step back and examine the U.S. voters’ take on whether the country is headed in the right direction or off on the wrong track, the country has basically been on the side of “wrong track” for nearly two decades — call it a massive and generation-long political recession.
And our presidential and midterm election outcomes in that time have indicated that a majority of said electorate was looking for change.
Only two national elections in this century — 2004 and 2012 — did not see a flip of one of the following three Washington power centers: The White House, which has changed partisan hands three times (2008, 2016 and 2020), the Senate four times (2002, 2006, 2014 and 2020) and the House four times (2006, 2010, 2018 and 2022).
Compare that to the 1960s and 1970s, when neither the House nor the Senate changed partisan hands once! The House flipped just one time (1994) in the last 40 years of the 20th century. Moreover, every party that won the presidency in the 20th century got re-elected at least once, with one exception: Jimmy Carter’s Democratic Party in 1980. Every other president who served one term or less was preceded by a president of the same party.
This current era of unhappiness arguably began in late 2005, when confidence in the government and, specifically, in its leaders, really started to take a dive post-9/11. The big impetus in that moment was the failure to find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, which was the perceived threat that ultimately convinced a majority of Congress to give then-President George W. Bush their stamp of approval to invade the country.
The erosion of confidence in government and in the direction of the country only got worse over the next 20 years as more perceived failures of the government and/or elite institutions showcased themselves. From the economy to personal security to the broken information eco-system, it’s been a negative spiral for the most part since 2005. The public expressed blips of positive vibes (after the election of Barack Obama, for instance), but they were just that: blips, as the overall gloom of pessimism returned fairly quickly and continues today.
Both candidates are and should be having a hard time making the case for change simply due to their current and former jobs.
Trump has really struggled with this issue since President Joe Biden dropped out. With Biden as his opponent, Trump was the “change” candidate since the election was turning into a choice between which presidential term you hated least. And since Trump wasn’t the current incumbent, he got to be the default “change” candidate even if he wasn’t pitching anything new.
With Vice President Kamala Harris as his opponent, Trump is running into the same problem that cost him re-election in 2020: He’s the same person he’s always been. That character trait, I believe, exhausted the country in 2020 (especially with his horrendous handling of the pandemic), and it’s now the focal point of the Harris campaign’s attempt to paint Trump as the incumbent of this political era — hence the “turn the page” messaging on which Harris and running mate Tim Walz are leaning heavily.
Ironically, the candidate who provided the blueprint for this Harris messaging was Trump’s chief primary foe in 2024: Nikki Haley.
Check out this press release from the Haley campaign in February. It was in response to Trump saying he could “only see the Black ones” referring to fellow Americans in the audience of one of his primary rallies. (It was due to some apparent lighting issue.)
“This is what happens when Donald Trump goes off the teleprompter. That’s the chaos that comes with Donald Trump. That’s the offensiveness that will come every day until the general election. … This is a huge warning sign. We have to stop with the chaos. We have to stop with the drama. We have to stop with the bad sound bites that keep happening over and over again, and we have to listen to the American people. … There is a choice. We can leave the chaos and the drama, we can leave the incompetence. We can go to something that is normal. And that’s what the people want, especially the younger generation. They just want to know what normal feels like.”
Try this exercise: Imagine I told you Harris said all of the above after Trump’s most recent rally? You’d likely believe me. There’s not much different in Harris’ messaging about Trump these days as there was from Haley. In fact, Harris incorporated the phrase “chaos and calamity” in her DNC acceptance speech last month.
In short, the Harris campaign believes it can paint Trump as the de facto incumbent even if he’s not currently sitting in the White House.
It’s not dissimilar to the campaign Biden ran against Trump in 2020. Here’s a choice quote from Biden’s 2020 acceptance speech:
“What we know about this president is if he’s given four more years he will be what he’s been the last four years. A president who takes no responsibility, refuses to lead, blames others, cozies up to dictators, and fans the flames of hate and division. He will wake up every day believing the job is all about him. Never about you.”
(By the way, if I told you Haley uttered that previous paragraph at some point during her primary campaign against Trump, you’d probably believe me.)
She certainly embraced the same tone and tenor when going after Trump, though with some caveats about him doing some things right.
Of course, if the current Democratic nominee were a sitting governor and not a sitting vice president who cast a record number of tie-breaking votes in the U.S. Senate, this messaging of framing Trump as the incumbent would be a lot easier.
But the fact remains Harris is the sitting vice president, and while those of us who have covered this administration closely know there’s been a limit to her influence in the Biden West Wing (certainly less than Biden’s in the Obama administration, for instance), the average voter does expect someone whose name is on the campaign account from 2020 to be accountable for how the ticket has led the country over the last four years.
And if she wins, what’s more likely? That she runs a radically different federal government from Biden — or that the change will be about as noticeable as the Reagan-Bush handoff in 1989, with a share of Reagan Cabinet members staying on into George H.W. Bush’s term?
I think we know the answer: Harris would probably have a Cabinet that has roots in both Obama and Biden White House’s. And Biden’s Cabinet certainly shared a lot of DNA with the Obama years as well.
So, who will voters believe is the incumbent? That’s eye of the beholder stuff. If you are a voter who goes back and forth based more on policy and is negative on Biden due to some specific issue, then Trump’s campaign may have an easier time making the case that Harris’ ties with the Biden administration are relevant and that she isn’t the change you’re looking for.
But if you are the type of voter for whom a president’s character and behavior and overall impact on the nation’s psyche mean more than a specific policy position, then the Harris campaign is going to have an easier time convincing you that Trump is the “incumbent” of this current political era.
Right now, I’d argue Harris has been more effective so far at pitching herself as “new” and “change” compared to Trump.
But this campaign to define the other as “the incumbent” gets supercharged next Tuesday at the debate. For me, how each candidate does painting the other as “more of the same” and painting themselves as “change” will be what I’m looking for in the immediate aftermath of the polling.
In fact, keep an eye on one polling question we will be asking soon after the debate: Which candidate “better represents change?” It might be the only poll question you’ll need to understand the November outcome.
