As the world’s oldest continually functioning constitutional republic, few things are unprecedented in American politics. Even the pending rematch between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, while a first within recent memory, has happened several times in our country’s long history.
There have been six presidential election rematches in American history, going all the way back to John Adams and Thomas Jefferson’s showdown in 1800. In four of those rematches, the loser of the first tilt won.
But one election in particular stands out as a model for Trump vs. Biden round two: the 1892 election between Grover Cleveland and Benjamin Harrison. To this day, it is the only rematch election between two men who had both served a term as president.
Eight years before, in 1884, Grover Cleveland became an unlikely presidential election winner. While Cleveland was a Democrat, he resembled President Trump in many ways. In those days, the Republican Party was the party of America’s establishment, while Democrats were the insurgent outsiders, still recovering from the aftermath of the Civil War. Like Trump, Cleveland was a surprise national political figure. In the fall of 1881, Cleveland was simply a prominent lawyer in Buffalo, New York. But after whirlwind stints as mayor of Buffalo and governor of New York, just three years later, Cleveland was president-elect.
Just like Trump, Cleveland survived an election-year sex scandal, in his case an out-of-wedlock child rather than the Access Hollywood tape (times were simpler then). Just like Trump, he rocked to the top
