No swing voters.

(David, March 5, 2024, Pittsburgh-Post Gazette, “David Mills: Only one kind of swing voter makes sense this election”, https://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/david-mills/2024/03/05/biden-trump-2024-swing-voters/stories/202403050091)

I may well be missing something, but try as I might, I can’t get into the head of someone who genuinely wavers between Trump and Biden. I can’t see being a swing voter in this election. The differences are too stark. That’s like wavering between Ukraine and Russia, or good health and cancer, beer and sewage, the Steelers and the Cowboys. Opinions will differ on which is which, but the difference is going to feel that great.

Certainly many voters have swung in the last four years. According to the New York Times, while 97% of the people who voted for Donald Trump in 2020 will vote for him this time, and almost none of them will vote for Joe Biden, only 83% of Biden’s 2020 voters say they’re voting for him and 10% say they’re voting for Trump. They’re not swing voters anymore.

The only kind of swing voter that makes sense in this election is one who’s wavering between voting for his preferred candidate and not voting or voting for a third party. The hold-your-nose-and-vote voter might reasonably be caught between his feeling that his preferred candidate is a lesser evil, because he’ll do the things that desperately need doing, and his feeling that his candidate is so bad he shouldn’t be in office at all, even if that means the other guy wins. He could easily become the I’m outta here voter.

I can understand the Trump supporter who believes that the next president must — for the nation’s survival — reduce taxes and regulation, secure the border, push back against wokeness, and avoid foreign entanglements, yet sees Trump as so bad a man he shouldn’t be elected.

I can understand the Biden supporter who believes the next president must — for the nation’s survival — continue to spend money on making the country better, treat immigrants generously, and nominate liberal judges for the Supreme Court, yet sees Biden as so old or too committed to waging war he shouldn’t be elected.

That kind of swing voter makes sense. The rest of us know that Trump will face Biden and know already the choice we’ll make. 

It doesn’t matter.

This means that as far as the presidential campaign goes, what happens politically in the next eight (eight!) months till election day doesn’t matter to us. We’re not — barring some huge development — going to change our vote. And that presents an opportunity to do something more fruitful than keeping up with Trump and Biden, and obsessing, as many of us tend to do, because politics and the rage and elation it creates is addictive, over every little bit of news, no matter how inconsequential.