Which 20th & 21st Century U.S. Presidents Could Defeat Donald Trump in the 2024 Election?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Although this is an enormously complicated question, through the magic of SDMB, let’s forget the political party affiliations or political platforms of our 20th- and 21st-century U.S. presidents and simply answer this question: If alive today, which of these leaders would defeat Donald Trump in a hypothetical 2024 presidential election based on their personality and personal appeal to today’s voters, their oratory, and their prowess on the campaign trail? Their age today would be the same as when they first entered office as U.S. President. Forget about term limits, etc. And, yes, smart boy, I mean they would be campaigning on today’s issues, not on those issues facing the nation in the, say, 1930s or 1960s. (Does that really make sense? Can a candidate’s personal appeal really be divorced from the issues of the time that elevated him into the Oval Office? Answer: In SDMB Land, yes. This is Wacky Tuesday. Don’t get fancy!)

The list of eligibles is William McKinley, Teddy Roosevelt, William Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George HW Bush, Bill Clinton, George W Bush, and Barrack Obama.

Bonus question (only after answering the question above): Go ahead and include ALL U.S. presidents vs. Donald Trump, from Washington through Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, and, um, Grover Cleveland.

Super-bonus question: Which of these presidents would have the strongest negative views of Donald Trump? And which one would likely refer to DT as “that dumb sonovabitch”?

2

No Republican presidents, since they would be trying to appeal to Trump’s Republicans. Any Democrat would have to pretty recent, and even the most recent would have problems relating to today’s issues.

3

All of them. His one win was a fluke.

Super bonus question 2: LBJ

4

This is a fun hypothetical!. Here’s some of my traits that I think would be beneficial to accomplish the task. Note, that a few of the people who would pass these tests are likely to end up being worse than Trump. To start of, they would of course have to be charismatic. An egghead technocratic type isn’t going to do it. From there, here are the different strategies that I think are viable, and which POTUSs fall into each category.

  1. Being a charismatic moderate* who gets the far left to turn out because of their charisma and / or popularity.

George Washington
Abraham Lincoln
Franklin Roosevelt
Dwight Eisenhower
John F Kennedy
Bill Clinton
Barack Obama

  1. They pull off the folksy old fashioned conservative style of messaging that wins over the non-reactionary segment of Trump’s base.

Ronald Reagan

  1. They out-Trump Trump.

Andrew Jackson

  1. Populists who are in it for the good of the whole country, not just for themselves or those who only want to help “real Americans”.

Teddy Roosevelt.

Notable absences who I think would lose to Trump.

The non-Washington Founding Fathers. I think the Adamses in particular would get trounced.

LBJ. He didn’t just cede the South to the Republicans for a generation in this scenario. Trumpists would hold the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts against him and turn out in droves. He would be done for.

Nixon, Bush Sr., and Bush Jr. The type of old fashioned non-fascist conservatives that Trump swept away in the 2016 primary. They’d have no chance as well.

Since we’re dealing with just the hypothetical and not the actual, I’ll leave Biden out of it.

*. I’m classifying all the POTUSs who aren’t populists or conservatives as moderates. I don’t think we’ve had any truly liberal POTUSs (expect maybe Jimmy Carter, but he didn’t make my list).

ETA: Other than Jackson, I think anyone on this list would be better than Trump. Even Reagan.

5

Are you predicting that Donnie defeats Truman? Because that’s maybe not a wise move.

6

Yeah, I think Truman would lose. It would be close, but he’d still lose. I obviously wasn’t around back then, but I think he compares to Hillary Clinton in terms of charisma and how liberal he was for his time period. And we know what happened to Hillary.

7

Obama, FDR and Reagan beat Trump in a landslide; T. Roosevelt in a somewhat closer race. It might be a tossup with JFK.

I’d like to observe (preferably from the Moon) Trump vs. Nixon or Trump vs. LBJ. Those two had enough dirty tricks up their sleeves to put Trump on ice before the primaries would be over.

8

Too many unknowable variables. I think it’s quite likely that he’ll be convicted of and start sentence for a serious felony before election day, and I also think that that’s a big enough event to pierce the information bubble for a significant fraction of the folks who would vote for him, in which case anyone would defeat him. But if that doesn’t happen, then who knows? For a lot of voters, the information bubble is probably tight enough that they don’t even know who his opponent is.

9

Don’t know about that. They didn’t say “give 'em hell, Harry” for nothing.

10

Trump would go after Teddy’s family on social media and get the crap kicked out of him at the next meeting-I think he’d genuinely scare Trump. The same is true of Washington and Jackson. The rest of the Founding Fathers would have a rough time. I’m curious how Lincoln would do.

Obama, Clinton, and FDR would do decently, but I wonder how the MAGA media would handle FDR’s wheelchair. Probably not tactfully.

11

Okay, since I started this discussion, I will weigh in. Again, this is an election based on the PERSONALITIES and personal appeal of the POTUSes from the past.

Yes, I agree Obama and Clinton would trounce Trump today. Not even close. FDR had a very patrician mien, which played well in Depression-era America (he instilled confidence) but I’m not sure how it would play in America of today. And yes, Trump’s hit squad would be all over FDR’s handicap. I could easily see Trump making jokes about FDR’s wheelchair, and Trump’s handlers cringing on the outside and laughing on the inside.

Harry Truman would give Trump one hell of a fight, and he’d remind voters what presidential timbre is and is not. He’d also remind voters who talk so much about the Constitution that Trump has dictatorial impulses. Harry would also allege that Trump is a tool of the Soviets/Russians. Truman was a sharp observer and student of history. He’d know how to handle Trump, though he wouldn’t play to the Cro-Magnon many.

JFK would handily defeat Trump, partly on verve, humor, and cool, partly on his youth. And with Jackie at his side, I think it would be a landslide.

Not sure about Eisenhower. He helped win the Big One, but he scores low on rock-star charisma, which so many adolescent adult Americans crave today in the Oval Office.

Trump would defeat the hapless Bushes. Ditto against Gerald Ford. No contest.

A Nixon-Trump contest would be weird as hell. Yes, both are Republicans but forget that for a moment, as we’re talking personal appeal. On his worst day, Nixon couldn’t hold a candle to Trump’s wanton criminality. Nixon may have been an oddball, but he had a lot of horse sense and was a wily campaigner. Slight advantage: Nixon.

An Abraham Lincoln-Donald Trump matchup would be surreal LOL. Lincoln had ten thousand times the intelligence of Donny and he was a man of the people. He was a scrappy debater, which is something no one ever accused Trump of, though Trump would win big on Best Bleached Teeth. I think Lincoln had an authenticity that would appeal to many.

I don’t see any of the pre- or post-Civil War presidents faring well. Trump would crush Andrew Johnson, who was ten times darker than Bob Dole, which is saying a lot. Ulysses S. Grant through Grover Cleveland and McKinley, advantage Trump. Ditto for Trump vs. Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover, Trump wins by landslide. Trump vs LBJ. That would be a knock-down, drag-out fight. Advantage LBJ.

Another oddball matchup: Trump vs. Woodrow Wilson. Wilson was professorial and thoughtful (and, yes, racist–who wasn’t then?), but I think Trump would poke fun of him constantly and ultimately smash him. Voters don’t want eggheads in the Oval Office. If Trump can mock the United Nations, he’d have a field day with the League of Nations. BTW, Trump would make Stalin smile. Stalin loved useful idiots.

12

I assume the question is about the general election, not the primaries. “Trump Republican” MAGAts are a small subset of all Republicans. So my answer is “all of them” could defeat Trump – Republicans and Democrats alike.

But I could be wrong. I’m thinking back to the 1960 election, which pitted the intelligent, charismatic, and brilliant orator JFK against a furtive and sweaty Richard Nixon who not only exuded dishonesty like a pervasive stench but in the televised debate had an unsettling resemblance to a nocturnal rodent. Yet faced with this stark choice, American voters had a real hard time making up their minds; Kennedy won, but by the slimmest of margins. So I conclude that even back then, Republicans had a uniquely narrow and self-centered view of the world in which the character of the candidate was a negligible consideration compared to what they believed he could do for them personally.

13

I guess I was figuring that Hillary won the popular vote while being damn close to winning the electoral vote, which I figure means that “pretty much Hillary Clinton, but swap out a couple of details” would’ve meant pulling ahead; heck, I’m cynical enough to wonder if “pretty much Hillary Clinton, but a man” — let alone “a man who’d served as an artillery officer” — would suffice.

14

Yes, but FDR knew how to reach out directly to the people with his fireside chats. I had the thought the other day (before you started this thread) that Biden needs to do something like this. Take his case directly to the American people. Give an address every few weeks or so on what he plans to do to make the lives of average Americans better. FDR wouldn’t do it in the style of a savvy cool young guy like Bill Clinton or Barack Obama, but I bet he would do a lot better on TikTok, Facebook, and Youtube than Biden has done.

Agree. This is why I think he’s the closest comparison to Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. Truman is the historical 50/50 Trump opponent who would give us a nail biter election that would come down to a few thousand votes in the swing states.

Also agree. Trump would run circles around Woodrow Wilson. He would be the perfect opponent for Trump. He’d manage to paint Wilson as the racist Democrat (which he was, even when taking into account the time period he lived in), and somehow convince people that he personally wasn’t racist in comparison (which he isn’t - meaning he is racist but not as much as Wilson- even comparing both men to their respective time periods) and win in a landslide. Trump would probably win all 50 states against Woodrow, and put Reagan’s 1984 victory to shame.

Disagree. This would be like the battle one villain who has no scruples against another who has some scruples. The one with no scruples will anytime. Think of something like a Karate Kid matchup between Mike Barnes (Trump) and Johnny Lawrence (Nixon). Johnny wouldn’t stand a chance, and neither would Nixon.

15

I’d be all-in on Honest Abe, but his squeaky speaking voice wouldn’t go over well in the media age.

16

No, even in absolute terms, Trump is more racist than Wilson. Wilson was racist, but it wasn’t his first priority, or even very high on the list. Trump, though, has no political policies whatsoever other than racism.

17

Biden is not a 21st century president? Biden has already beaten Trump, and is about to do it again.

18

It could be amusing to imagine what his daughter would say about Trump - didn’t she dismiss Dewey as “the man on the wedding cake”? Though how that would play with the voters is another matter

19

Clinton would walk it. Southern. Big man energy. Folksy touch. He has the lefty credentials to hold the left and the good ole boy touch to hold the MAGAT’s.

20

FlikTheBlue. “Agree. This is why I think he’s the closest comparison to Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. Truman is the historical 50/50 Trump opponent who would give us a nail biter election that would come down to a few thousand votes in the swing states.”

*Let’*s not forget that Truman dropped two atomic bombs on Japan. The MAGA crowd would admire that, as nukes are the 2nd amendment pushed to the extreme. And Truman could encourage voters to watch the movie “Seven Days in May.”

Trump, meanwhile, would never have tolerated a Douglas MacArthur, not for a moment. Two deranged, megalomaniacal narcissists on one stage is one too many for Trump, unless the other guy’s name is Kim. :wink: