As the presidential primaries unfold, a Trump-Biden rematch in November appears increasingly likely. History suggests a smooth path to victory for incumbents like Joe Biden, but the scenario becomes far less predictable when that incumbent is running against another former president like Donald Trump.

Straight Arrow News contributor Matthew Continetti highlights the rarity of a sitting president and a former president vying against each other in a general election. The presence of Trump as one of the candidates, Continetti argues, adds even more unpredictability to the situation.

Americans face a choice between two “incumbent” presidents. The idea might sound oxymoronic, a political version of the Pauli exclusion principle in physics, whereby two particles cannot occupy the same space at once. That is precisely the situation, barring an act of God or the Obamas, in which we find ourselves.

There hasn’t been a “two-incumbent election” between the major parties since 1892. That year, Republican President William Henry Harrison faced the man whom he had defeated four years earlier, Democrat Grover Cleveland. In 1892, Cleveland won. At present, he is the lone president who has served non-consecutive terms.

In 2024, Donald Trump wants to play Cleveland to President Joe Biden’s Harrison. Trump, like Cleveland, won more votes losing in 2020 than he did winning in 2016. Trump also leads a party whose geographic base is the South. Trump also has five children. Yet the similarities end there.

The precedent of 1892 is so distant that it hardly seems relevant. Our “two-incumbent election” is a novelty. It’s a twice-impeached criminally-charged Republican against a deeply unpopular Democrat who faces his own impeachment inquiry and whose adult son is under federal indictment.