The 2024 Presidential election has already proven to be one for the history books. For the first time in Millennial and Zoomer lives, two one-term presidents were running for office, both claiming a term in the Oval Office. For the first time, a televised debate ruined a sitting president’s incumbent party nomination. For the first time in the 21st Century, a former president and current presidential nominee was almost killed in an assassination attempt.
The race on August 23, when Vice Pres. Kamala Harris was anointed the Democratic presidential nominee, looked vastly different than the race did on July 21 when President Joe Biden announced on X (formerly known as Twitter) that he was dropping out of the race. And this outcome seemed to many people unthinkable when classes ended in May. So let us catch up with this roller coaster of a summer.
The most pivotal event for the current presidential race occurred on June 27. It was supposed to be the first of two debates between Biden and Donald Trump. This debate was unique in several ways.
First, it was the first presidential debate to not be organized and planned by the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD), established in 1987 in bipartisan fashion, since the CPD’s establishment. After the poor debates in 2020, both because of the pandemic and poor moderation, neither candidate wanted nor trusted the commission this time around. Thus, the two candidates went outside the commission for the debates.
Second, neither candidate had officially been nominated by their party. Trump had gone through an interesting primary process, never really being in danger of losing his chance at a second term but showing his unpopularity within the Republican party. The Democratic party technically had a primary process, but, in reality, Biden and his party squashed any intra-party disagreement to his candidacy. At least until after the debate.
Third, Biden’s performance was so bad that he was forced by his party to drop out of the race. While Trump was his usual self, hyperbolic and brash, Biden proved critiques of his age were more than partisan attacks. From the very first moment that Biden was on stage, meandering with that elderly walk we all know, the American public was shown just how old Biden is. The media nor the Democrats could whistle past the graveyard, or in this case the debate stage, any longer.
The media’s reaction was immediate, and despite attempts to lessen the blow of Biden’s “halting” performance, the deluge of calls to drop out were deafening. But the decision to drop out, itself a historic event, did not occur until after another historic event.
On July 13, while the Democratic polling was slipping to unthinkable levels, Trump was holding an outdoor rally near Butler, Penn. This rally was in preparation for the Republican National Convention the next week. In a stunning show of incompetence, the Secret Service allowed a young man to get on a roof with a rifle and fire three shots at Trump, who was struck in the ear while a rally-goer was killed. The dramatic photo of Trump raising his hand with his blood splattered face in front a large American flag was immediately picked up and thought to be a defining moment in the race.
And it was. Trump was ahead of Biden in the polls, both due to the implosion of the Biden Campaign and the assassination attempt. There was a brief moment in time when it seemed that American politics might cool down, with both candidates calling for a cooler temperature in rhetoric. It didn’t last the week.
Mr. Biden posted a statement on X that he was dropping out of the race on July 21. He did not name a successor to his candidacy, mainly because he wasn’t actually the nominee yet. The Democratic party went from calling him old and incompetent to run the office, raising the specter of the 25th Amendment even, to praising him, with Nancy Pelosi claiming he deserved to be on Mount Rushmore. He had such an impressive record that, in his own words, “merit a second term,” and yet he was obviously not able to run a campaign to beat Donald Trump nor make it through a second term.
So, here we are in September, just two months away from the election. Harris has been anointed the Democratic nominee, and the two candidates are preparing for the first of their debates. The political fortunes for Trump have gone from almost certainly another term in the Oval Office to a neck-to-neck race. Given this track record, it wouldn’t be out of the question to expect another historic turn of events in the interim.
