Chuck Todd: Biden, Trump and voters’ stages of grief

It’s the rematch nobody is looking forward to, the matchup voters say they don’t want. And yet, with nearly 300 days left until Election Day, Joe Biden versus Donald Trump appears to be what the public is going to get this year, whether they like it or not.

Whether you are ready to accept this reality depends on which stage of grief you currently find yourself in. Are you still in denial that these are our choices? Does this potential matchup anger you? Are you, like some major centrist donors in this country, dead set on bargaining your way out of this situation by searching for a third option? Have you vowed to walk away from politics thanks to a bout of depression over this choice?

Or are you at acceptance?

There are two camps that are desperate to get to acceptance: the campaigns of Trump and Biden. But outside of those two entities, there is plenty of trepidation in both parties about going to political war one more time with these two aging and unpopular leaders.

And that brings me to the point of just why I’m using the stages of grief to describe this likely showdown in the fall. Because while it’s hard to imagine any other fate at this point than Biden-Trump II, there are still plenty of major donors and elite opinion leaders who are not quite ready to concede to what appears to be inevitable.

Most importantly, there are plenty of voters, especially those who live ideologically somewhere between the two bases of the two major parties, who are also hoping for another option — either within the political party they belong to or from the outside.

This is a long way of setting up the following: The nation is still very much in the bargaining stage — and why shouldn’t we be? It’s still only January. At this point