The last time the Democrats and the Republicans held a White House rematch with the same two contenders was 1956, when Ike beat Adlai Stevenson for the second straight time. Earlier, there were redos with William McKinley and William Jennings Bryan (McKinley won both in 1896 and 1900) and Grover Cleveland vs. Benjamin Harrison (in 1888, Harrison defeated the incumbent Cleveland, who then staged a comeback victory in 1892).
In the pre-Civil War days, before the GOP existed, when there were Whigs and such, Martin Van Buren beat William Henry Harrison in 1836 and lost to him four years later. The same for John Quincy Adams besting Andrew Jackson in 1824 and falling to Jackson in 1828, and way back in the beginning, John Adams was victorious over Thomas Jefferson in 1796 and was ousted by Jefferson in 1800.
All the losers accepted the outcomes (although Jackson’s bitter 1824 defeat in the House of Representatives was known as the “corrupt bargain”), and such good sportsmanship is something we can’t count on this year from one of the candidates. Something else that all these previous repeats shared was that none of the competitors ever faced off against each other on stage, as presidential debates only started in 1960.
That also will change on June 27, when Joe Biden and Donald Trump, a pair of presidents, current and former, have a one-on-one on CNN, with a second debate, on ABC, on Sept. 10, not long after Labor Day. There are many good things here in this arrangement, which was sealed last week via social media (Twitter/X for Biden and Truth Social for Trump).
Even though neither man is formally yet their party’s nominees (the Republicans gather in Milwaukee for their convention in mid-July, while Chicago welcomes the Democrats five weeks later), this election has been well underway since Trump closed down Nikki Haley’s challenge in March, so there is no reason to wait until the fall.