Unless things change in a major way, America seems headed for a repeat election in 2024. President Joe Biden will be the Democratic nominee, while Donald Trump will carry the banner for the Republicans. There are plenty of interesting things about such a rematch (such as the fact that Trump will be the first ex-president to run again in a very long time), but the most interesting thing currently is that most of the public simply does not want to see this rematch. They would prefer a different matchup, for various reasons. But they may get Biden-versus-Trump anyway.

The sentiment was quantified by an NBC poll released over the weekend (questions 11 and 12 in the data, on page 8). They asked people whether they wanted to see Joe Biden run again and whether they wanted to see Donald Trump run again. A whopping 70 percent didn't want Biden to run, while 60 percent didn't want Trump to run. Those are not positive numbers for either side, obviously. So why is it that the political system will offer up precisely what large majorities of the public do not want? Well, that's complicated. For starters, the reasons are different for both candidates.

Joe Biden is president. Incumbency is a powerful thing. Many had hoped, when Biden ran and won in 2020, that he would be a "caretaker" president and hand the reins of the party over to someone else after serving just one term. He would clean up Trump's mess and get the country back on track, and then he'd gracefully exit the scene.

He has cleaned up Trump's mess to an astonishing degree, when you take into account what he had to cope with when he took office, as well as his thin majorities in Congress. But these successes actually argue for Biden to run again. Why shouldn't he get another four years if he's done such a good job in his first term?

The only way Joe Biden will not be the party's nominee is if he himself decides to step down at some point, likely due to some medical problem. Biden's age is the biggest drag on his candidacy, and while he has been remarkably healthy so far (he is 80 years old), there is no guarantee he'll stay healthy throughout the campaign. Barring a health problem, though, Biden's pretty much got a lock on the nomination. There is no large faction of Democrats who are ideologically angry enough at Biden to back a challenger, and even if there were there is no such challenger in sight. The American people may overwhelmingly not want Biden to run again, but that doesn't extend to any Democratic politician who might have a chance of beating him. Senator Bernie Sanders immediately endorsed Biden's campaign launch, for example.

While Democrats are locked in to Biden's nomination for reasons of incumbency, the picture is nowhere near as clear on the Republican side. In the GOP race, there are already some challengers running against Trump, and even more who seem on the brink of officially jumping into the race as well. Unfortunately for them, however, Republican voters don't seem especially interested in any of them. Trump is dominating the field, with a 2-to-1 advantage over his nearest competitor. So far, there just isn't anyone strong enough to dethrone Trump's position as the leader of the party. Trump is currently polling above 50 percent among Republican voters, which is incredibly high for this stage of an open race. No other candidate has really been able to dent Trump's support, although most of the ones running (officially or unofficially) haven't even really tried to. They have all shied away from directly attacking Trump -- most of them refuse to even mention him by name, in fact.

The only thing that could really change this dynamic is either a new candidate jumping in the race who is courageous enough to attack Trump directly (and gains support by doing so), or Trump's standing with the base voters somehow eroding on its own. Currently, Trump is on trial in a civil rape case in New York, he has been indicted on felony charges in the same state, and he faces much more serious charges from Georgia and possibly the federal government. Throughout all of this he has played the "victim card," and GOP voters have accepted this. But if his legal problems snowball to the point that it looks like Trump will never win the 2024 race due to his growing pile of baggage, even Republican base voters might decide backing another horse makes a lot more sense.

But barring any dramatic changes, it sure looks like Trump is set to take the GOP nomination. When he did so in 2016, he didn't actually start getting over half the Republican votes until the very final primaries. He won most of them with only around a third of the vote -- which was more than any other candidate could manage. And currently, he's already got the support of over half of Republicans in most polls. It is still early days, but he sure seems unbeatable at this point.

So the chances are more likely than not that America gets exactly what they say they don't want: Biden versus Trump in 2024. There may be one big wildcard, however. There is a very well-funded effort attempting to get a new political party on the ballot in all 50 states, to pave the way for a third-party bid. This may consist of a slate made up of one Republican and one Democrat, as a sort of middle-of-the-road bipartisan ticket. Third parties are pretty much doomed to fail in the American presidential election system, but they can effectively be spoilers and throw the race to one candidate or the other. This would most likely work against Joe Biden, although that is not certain (it would probably depend on who was actually nominated). A strong third-party candidate would at least change the 2024 race from being a straight repeat of the 2020 contest, though.

All of this is no more than conventional political wisdom, which means it could quite easily turn out to be wrong (especially since Donald Trump is one of the factors involved). And believe it or not, but public dissatisfaction with candidate choices is not all that great an indicator of success. Admittedly, 70 percent of the public being against the idea of the president running again isn't great, but other first-term presidents have also faced skepticism at similar points in the past. Pew Research numbers prove this. When voters were asked whether they would like to see the sitting president run for re-election, less than 50 percent agreed for Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and Ronald Reagan. Reagan was the worst, in fact, with only 36 percent wanting him to run again. This led to a Washington Post headline in September of 1982 which read: "Reagan Should Not Seek Second Term, Majority Believes." Reagan, of course, went on to crush Walter Mondale in 1984, in one of the biggest landslide elections ever. And you know who the public did support for re-election in early polling? Jimmy Carter (50 percent support) and George H.W. Bush (53 percent). Both men went on to lose, obviously.

Nothing is set in stone, this early out. All kinds of intervening events will change the political dynamics of the 2024 race throughout the remainder of this year and during the primary season next year. That is an eternity in politics. The only thing that seems certain is that when 2024 begins, we will all be talking about something that nobody (at this point) ever saw coming. But even though the subject matter will change, something truly drastic is going to have to happen to truly shift the dynamic with the primary voters. Right now it certainly seems that Biden will waltz to his nomination, and then Democratic voters will (perhaps reluctantly) get on board and vote for him in the general election. It also seems that Trump will continue to dominate the Republican field due to his iron grip on the base of MAGA voters. They don't really want "someone just as good as Trump," because why vote for Trump-lite when you can vote for Trump himself? It is impossible to predict how the general election will play out (Trump and Biden are currently running neck-and-neck in polling pitting them against each other), but even though few even want to see it, we may be presented with a repeat of the 2020 election. For better or worse, that seems to be the course the country is now on.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant