Christina Cauterucci in Slate:
The 2024 presidential election is 14 months away, which means political news sites are already saturated with poll-obsessed prognostication and horse-race reporting. In this way, every election season is alike—but this year’s run-up has felt particularly repetitive. Joe Biden, who reportedly told advisers in 2019 that he would not seek a second term if elected in 2020, is seeking a second term. Donald Trump, a former president enthusiastically campaigning in the shadow of multiple indictments, is all but certain to be the Republican nominee. The 2024 race is turning out to be a zombie contest: It’s November 2020, risen from the dead, with an abundance of ugly new boils to flaunt.
The country isn’t too happy about it. A recent CNN poll of registered voters found that 31 percent viewed neither Biden nor Trump favorably. Compare that to the 19 percent who viewed neither Hillary Clinton nor Trump favorably just before the 2016 election. That was already the only election in recorded history in which more Americans disliked the two major party candidates than liked them. Voters have spent a cumulative seven years watching Trump and Biden perform the job of president, and about a third of them haven’t liked what they’ve seen.
More here.