The general election campaign between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, the rematch almost nobody wanted, began ahead of schedule last week.Former South Carolina Gov.

Nikki Haley is still contesting the Republican nomination, but she will need a miracle — actually, more than one miracle — to dethrone Trump. The chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, Ronna McDaniel, declared the former president to be her party's presumptive nominee even though only two states have actually voted in caucuses or primaries.

In practice, Biden and Trump are campaigning against each other as if Haley were already gone. This indecently early start isn't the only factor that makes this election unusual:It has been 112 years since an incumbent president and a former president collided in a rematch.

Never in modern history have two candidates so unpopular gone up against each other (although the 2016 contest between Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton came close). And never before have the presumptive nominees been so old; Biden is 81, Trump will turn 78 in June. "The fact that you have two [candidates who've been president], neither of whom is well-liked, makes it a unique situation," Democratic pollster and strategist Mark Mellman said.

When an incumbent president runs for a second term, the election is normally a referendum on his record.But this will be a "dual referendum," because both candidates have........

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