There is a fundamental difference between advertising for products and for political campaigns. Consumers do not have to decide once every four years whether they want to eat KitKat or M&Ms. They can buy one today and the other one tomorrow. Or, they can avail of both today. This is fundamentally different in politics: voters have to chose out of competing options.

Let’s think about a moment what advertisers would do differently if consumers had to decide. Instead of running long-term branding campaigns, they would emphasize the difference: why one and not the other one. And they would create urgency and tell people why it really matters for them.

That’s precisely the dynamics of election campaigns where it’s all about the difference between the candidates. On its face, Americans don’t want Joe Biden nor Donald Trump to be the next president. But that’s not the question they will have to decide. If it’s coming down to a rematch, voters will have to choose. Democrats will vote for Biden, Republicans for Bush, but what will voters in the middle do? It will be down to the so-called double haters, those who have a negative opinion about both. If that would happen today, having Trump in the race would push a considerable number of them to vote for Biden.

Now, I’m not saying that Trump could never win (I even have doubts he will win the nomination), but I think that voters would have to turn much more sour on Biden for that to happen.