Schmidt is a syndicated columnist and editorial board member with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
The dislike for the candidates at the top of both parties’ tickets is so unpalatable, “Literally Anybody Else” might be coming to a ballot near you. While the dissatisfaction with the race is palpable, the basis for the disappointment in the candidates could not be more different.
Dustin Ebey, a 35-year-old U.S. Army veteran and seventh grade math teacher in the Dallas suburbs, legally changed his name to Literally Anybody Else and is running for president of the United States to prove this point.
The Texas man says he believes anybody else should be president instead of the Democratic and GOP frontrunners. "America should not be stuck choosing between the 'King of Debt' (his self-declaration) and an 81-year old. Literally Anybody Else isn't a person, it's a rally cry," Else's campaign website stated before being updated, according to
Else told a Dallas news outlet that his campaign wasn't about sending him to the White House; rather, he said he wanted to give voters a chance to express their unhappiness with Trump's and Biden's candidacies. "People are voting for the lesser of two evils, not someone they actually believe in or support. People should have the option to vote for someone who resembles and represents them, not the lesser of two evils. I reject that,” he said.
Both candidates are disliked by a majority of Americans. A YouGov-University of Massachusetts Amherst poll conducted in January showed that 45 percent of Americans believe a Biden-Trump rematch is bad for the country.
In a ABC-Ipsos survey, 36 percent of Americans said they trust Trump to do a better job leading the country as president, while 33 percent trust Biden more – and 30 percent trust neither.
A New York Times-Siena College poll from March found that 19 percent of voters disapproved of both men, but Biden is slightly less hated, with a spread of 7 points between them (45 percent to 38 percent).
The voters reflected in these surveys have been labeled “double haters” and they make up as much as one-fifth of likely voters according to various polls. This group is likely to decide the 2024 election.
Judith Smith, from Moncks Corner, S.C., discussed the choice between Trump and Biden with The Guardian. “That’s like choosing between a hedgehog and a porcupine,” she said.
I disagree with Smith here and would suggest changing the analogy from animals to fruit. It is like choosing between an overripe, mealy apple and an orange that is completely rotten and you don’t really want to eat either.
Since we live in a hyper-partisan world, the percentage of the electorate who will not vote party line has been shrinking. Those voters who are up for grabs, including the “double haters,” should consider weighing both the character and policy proposals of each, while being mindful of the fallacy of moral equivalence. This fallacy occurs when one suggests that two morally different actions are equivalent, simply because they share some similarities. This is no easy task for responsible citizens as they consider the characteristics and qualifications of any candidate before Election Day.
While neither man is popular, it seems too easy to fall into the moral equivalency trap and to compare them as if they were the same.
Trump incited an insurrection and is an adjudicated rapist. He faces 91 felony counts after being indicted four times within the last year. He is accused in Georgia and Washington, D.C., of plotting to overturn his 2020 election loss to Biden. He is also accused in Florida of mishandling classified documents, and in Manhattan of falsifying business records stemming from hush money payments, made during his 2016 campaign, to a pornographic film actress.
Biden, on the other hand, is an octogenarian who many feel is not at the top of his game and has an even more unpopular running mate. He is trying to hold together a fragile coalition that stems from progressives to the left of him and soft Republicans to his right. He struggles to make any one faction in his alliance particularly happy. One has to look no further than Biden’s tightrope walk on foreign policy, specifically the Israel-Hamas war or securing our southern border.
Literally Nobody Else is not likely to gain ballot access, and therefore the double haters like him will need to go back and make the choice between not voting, voting for a third-party candidate, or judging Biden and Trump on their merits and which of the two “represents” them more.
Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner speaks to voters at a town hall at the Elks Lodge 188 on June 7, 2026, in Portland, Maine.
McConnell and Platner both feel entitled
The two men could not be more different. One, a Republican, octogenarian, seven-term Southern senator, the other a progressive, millennial Maine oysterman who’s never spent a day in elected office.
But Mitch McConnell, the senior senator from Kentucky who’s been MIA for the past few weeks and Graham Platner, the Maine Senate candidate who’s facing calls to drop out of his race against Sen. Susan Collins, apparently do have something in common: an outsized sense of entitlement.
McConnell, who is 84 and not running for reelection, has been hospitalized for three weeks, and yet we still don’t fully know what he was admitted for or what his condition is. Per CNN, “his office has not disclosed a medical reason for the hospitalization or provided specifics on his health status beyond saying last week that he ‘continues to improve’ and ‘is working closely with his staff on Kentucky and Senate matters.’ ”
While several legislators have said they’ve talked to him and insist he sounds strong, others have said they are completely in the dark. One MAGA influencer, Laura Loomer, posted ”High level source close to the White House tells me ‘Mitch McConnell is officially brain dead. He’s not coming back.’ ”
Meanwhile, up in Maine, Platner has been artfully dodging calls from his own party to drop out of his race after several allegations of misconduct from women, including a sexual assault allegation from a former girlfriend, came to light. While Platner, who has managed to survive a Nazi-tattoo scandal, a sexting scandal, and several old tweets scandals, denies the allegations, he has not quit.
High-profile Democrats including Sens. Bernie Sanders and Chuck Schumer, the latter of whom had unsuccessfully hand-selected Maine Gov. Janet Mills to face Collins instead of Platner, have urged Platner to drop out, while other Dems have accused him of trying to influence the picking of his replacement.
Maine Democratic Party Executive Director Devon Murphy-Anderson released a statement Tuesday, which said in part:
“Unfortunately, Graham Platner’s team has repeatedly reached out to us in an attempt to put their thumb on the scale of what this process looks like. We have repeatedly reiterated to Graham Platner’s team that they have no role in determining our next Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate nor in determining what this process looks like.”
Both incidents show a deep lack of accountability to voters, who in one case deserve to know whether their senator is capable of performing his duties, and in another deserve a candidate who isn’t being accused of crimes, bigotry and deception.
The offensive and odious entitlement of both McConnell and Platner stands out not because it is particularly unique among today’s political class. Tom Kean, the New Jersey GOP congressman, missed more than 100 votes, only sharing after a three-month mystery absence that he was dealing with depression.
Former President Joe Biden’s Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin failed to disclose a hospitalization for prostate cancer surgery, flouting the established rules for Cabinet members and senior U.S. officials.
From Biden’s insistence on running for reelection despite his obvious cognitive and political weaknesses to Trump’s brazen flouting of laws and norms, few politicians seem to appreciate that their public service job comes with responsibilities to constituents, including transparency and honesty.
But both parties increasingly justify the chicanery, because the stakes of winning elections and keeping power are simply too high. But that’s no excuse. If we’ve learned anything over the past decade, it’s that character and accountability do, in fact, matter. And when we, the voters, stop caring about it, well, so do they.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.