With Haley’s Departure, the Rematch Between Biden and Trump Is Now Set

The exit by Nikki Haley from the Republican primary after a string of resounding losses on Super Tuesday assured former President Donald J. Trump of his party’s nomination, kicking off a general election contest with President Biden that both sides expect will be bitter, brutal and long.

The matchup that many Americans had long hoped to avoid — the 2024 sequel of Biden vs. Trump — is now an inescapable reality.

It will be the country’s first presidential rematch in nearly 70 years, a consequential yet familiar collision of starkly different visions of American power, policy and democratic governance. And it will be an eight-month slog, with two nominees who polls show are deeply unpopular and who are each determined to make the race about his opponent, leaving both bent on running exceedingly negative campaigns.

“I’m not the gift of all presidents,” Mr. Biden told donors at a fund-raiser last month, “but I’m sure in hell better than the last guy.”

Mr. Biden has cast Mr. Trump as a threat to the very foundations of American democracy. He has cautiously avoided discussing the many legal threats facing the former president, including four criminal indictments and one trial set to begin later this month.

Mr. Trump, 77, has portrayed Mr. Biden, 81, as elderly, enfeebled and unable to perform the basic tasks of the presidency. “It’s the fascists and the communists that surround him — they’re making the calls,” Mr. Trump said on Fox News on Tuesday, in a sign of the caustic and conspiracy-tinged campaign to come. “They’re calling the shots. He’s not calling the shots.”