“The other guy is worse” won’t beat Trump

With the 2020 presidential campaign season underway as of four seconds after Hillary lost to Trump, a number of Democrats have gotten quite red in the face insisting that “we” (people willing to vote for a Democrat, one presumes) must defeat Trump in 2020.

Whether we should do this or that is one matter, but in terms of viable national election strategies, “the other guy is worse” is the worst possible rhetoric to use, and for a simple reason:

It doesn’t fucking work.

I looked at exit poll data for 2016, 2012, 2004, 2000 and 1996 (if the question was asked in 2008, I’m not seeing it). Two trends emerged:

1. As an issue, “The other guy is worse” favors Republicans.
2. As an issue, “The other guy is worse” doesn’t knock out incumbents or keep the White House from changing hands when the incumbent can’t run again.

The math for the issue favoring Republicans is clear enough:

Republicans won the issue in every year except 2004, and even when Democrats won it big, they still lost the election. And while that ten-point advantage might seem like enough to unseat Bush, given that Gore lost the 2000 election by a few hundred votes in one state, four years is a long time for things to change, and incumbents have an advantage in elections (as I showed here).

The evidence for the second trend is even clearer: No president has lost his bid for a second term since Bush in 1992, and no party has won three consecutive presidential elections since 1988. If “The other guy is worse” were an effective strategy for keeping one party in the White House three times in a row, it would have happened by now. Instead, we’ve gotten three consecutive two-term presidents for the first time ever.

Really. Obama winning re-election in 2012 and serving his full four-year term marked the first time the presidency has been occupied by three consecutive two-termers.

So the next time you hear whichever presidential candidate or political analyst opine that the most important thing is to beat Trump, or some other variation of “The other guy is worse,” please inform them that Republicans win the battle of worsts and that incumbents survive its effects.