How often does either party primary an incumbent president? Wikipedia only lists five notable one. And also has this little factoid that shows it usually backfires for the party.
Since the advent of the modern primary election system in 1972, an incumbent president has never been defeated by a primary challenger, though every president who faced a strong primary challenge went on to be defeated in the general election.
Excellent point, I wasn’t aware of that one. Not that we should always treat the past as indicative of the future, but rather, it’s clear that choosing such a path is playing with fire. For a litany of reasons.
Sadly, with Trump, we can’t afford to play with fire, period.
How often does either party primary an incumbent president? Wikipedia only lists five notable one. And also has this little factoid that shows it usually backfires for the party.
Edit - Forgot my wiki link. =(
Excellent point, I wasn’t aware of that one. Not that we should always treat the past as indicative of the future, but rather, it’s clear that choosing such a path is playing with fire. For a litany of reasons.
Sadly, with Trump, we can’t afford to play with fire, period.
I wonder how many of those 5 had an incumbent who was no longer capable of running a country.
He’s running the country right now, unless you think it’s really Obama and/or the Lizard People.
Never so far. There’s a first time for everything.
But there’s also the option of not primarying him and just not running Biden at all.