CHRIS CRUCIAL: 2024 is *all* about Trump

PLUS: GOP leaders get what they want in Nevada.

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1. The Trump Referendum

The 2024 election is unique (or, well, just plain weird) for a LOT of reasons:

• It’s a current president versus a former president

• It’s an 81 year-old guy vs a 77 year-old guy

• A majority of voters would replace both candidates if they could

But, as I was perusing the new CBS News national poll, I realized something else that makes this election very, very odd: This election is not a referendum on President Joe Biden but rather a referendum on former president Donald Trump.

Consider this finding from the poll:

What you are seeing there is this: TWICE as many likely Biden voters say that the main reason for their vote is to oppose Trump as say it is a positive affirmation of the president.

TWICE AS MANY!

That is incredible. Why? Because most elections featuring an incumbent — at any level — are all about that incumbent. Did he or she do what they said they would? Do you want them to get another two or four or six years to keep at it? Or should you try someone else instead?

A very smart Republican consultant once told me that 95% of beating an incumbent was convincing voters that he or she deserved to be fired. The remaining 5% was about persuading them that the challenger was serious and credible enough to be a place where they could park their discontent.

That’s especially true when we are talking about a presidential race. The president is, typically, totally known. And almost everyone has an opinion of him. The work of a challenger then is mostly to persuade the public to consider moving on — and being a relatively banal receptacle for those votes.

Trump is many, many things but he is not a banal receptacle. The simple fact — made apparent yet again by that CBS poll question — is that Trump is such a massive presence in politics (and the culture more broadly) that, even though he is the challenger, the race and how people are making up their minds on who to vote for revolves almost exclusively around him.

Biden, despite being the sitting president, is sort of a bystander in this equation. He’s the other guy in a binary choice. If you cannot possibly support Trump, then Biden’s your candidate.