Why the 2024 Election Was Described as “Crazy Shit After More Crazy Shit”

On a frosty morning in Iowa last January, when some members of the Republican Party could still delude themselves into thinking their party could be wrested from power. Donald Trump I asked a woman who voted for him twice why she now supports Nikki Haley in the Republican primaries. “Chaos follows,” she said. explained at one of the former South Carolina governor’s events at a diner in suburban Des Moines.

This was not a new observation, and – in its passive construction – it made Trump look more like a victim of chaos than the source of it. But it would prove just as good a basis for his bid to return to power: chaos reigned in the months that followed, an election year like never before. “It’s just more crazy shit after more crazy shit after more crazy shit,” the Democratic strategist said. Rebecca Piercy put this on me recently.

Crazier than usual? Well, America is a very strange place, so weirdness tends to be a feature of his choices. But the last three, with Trump on the ballot, have been particularly turbulent: 2016 saw the shock of his initial rise with a daily stream of scandals; the 2020 election took place against the backdrop of a pandemic and civil unrest, culminating in the MAGA uprising; and now, in 2024, the race features Trump’s felony conviction, two apparent assassination attempts, the departure of his incumbent rival and the rise of a new challenger who seemed – in a three-month sprint to the finish line – to make him even more upset than he was usually happens.

“New Normal” Wisconsin Representative Mark Pocan told me on the phone last week, “this is not normal.”

And the central question looming over this race as it enters its final day is: Will the election be a continuation (and maybe even an acceleration) of Trump’s last 10 years of turmoil? Or could the country finally, like Kamala Harris included it in her final campaign message last week, to begin to “turn the page on the drama and conflict” of the last decade?

It’s hard to say. After all, while Trump himself was the most obvious cause of the unrest, his emergence as a serious political force resulted from the institutional dysfunction and social erosion that preceded his descent down the golden escalator in 2015. This is one of the reasons the feeling of melancholy persists to this day Joe BidenThe Trump Presidency: He may have succeeded in calming our politics after the endless noise of the Trump years, but it only seems to have eased the buzz of frustration that already existed.

“It’s just depressing,” the college student said. told me at a small demonstration in Wisconsin back in April when Biden was touting his plan to provide student loan relief at Madison Technical College. The student was referring to the cold reality of American foreign policy—as seen in the Biden administration’s approach to Israel’s war in Gaza, which will be the subject of larger, heated protests on college campuses in the spring—but the sentiment also seemed to reflect broader frustrations about how our government sometimes fails to live up to the noble values ​​it espouses.

Trump has made a political career by exploiting this division, convincing large numbers of disaffected Americans that the answer to the flaws and imperfections of our systems is to burn them down. During his presidency, he started many fires, scarring social and political norms in the process. But the nation was not destroyed because enough members of his party were willing to pour buckets of water on the fire. The difference between now and 2016 or even 2020 is that the Republican Party has become a party of political arsonists who spent Biden’s term dousing our institutions with gasoline and trying to hand Trump a pack of matches.

What unity was showcased at the Republican National Convention back in July. Trump had already planned to come to Milwaukee as something of a conquering hero, having overcome what supporters saw as his political persecution – a 34-count conviction in a hush money case – and emerged as the favorite after Biden’s disastrous debate performance. But in their eyes, he was elevated to something like martyr status after he was wounded in a shooting at one of his rallies in Pennsylvania, just two days before the beginning of his nomination party. Earlier in the week, supporters wore shirts that read, “I’M VOTE FOR A CONVICTED CRIMINATOR.” At the end, many added an accessory: a white headband over his right ear, similar to the one Trump wore when he made his grand entrance at the Fiserv forum.

It was the perfect embodiment of Trumpism: during the day, the convention had a carnivalesque feel, and there was a nihilistic “it’s all just a game” joke among many of his supporters. But as they gathered for the evening’s program, the arena pulsed with dark energy. Trumpworld promised to make the former president softer and more united after the attempt on his life; instead, he seemed to stoke discontent even more openly, and his supporters seemed even more emboldened by it. At Trump’s first RNC as a presidential candidate Ted Cruz— once a bitter rival — told delegates to “vote their conscience,” even if it meant challenging the man GOP voters had chosen as their candidate; eight years later, Cruz practically nominated Trump as a divine decree. “Thank Almighty God for protecting President Trump,” Cruz said, “and for turning his head on Saturday when the shot was fired.”

Trump will leave Milwaukee with the wind at his back. His party was energized while Democrats were reeling not only from internal political divisions but also from their candidate, who spent his 81 years looking locked in a debate with Trump and subsequent damage control efforts. “Caucus Morale,” as one Democrat put it put this on in those dog days “is at a historical low.”

How quickly everything will change. Days after the RNC adjourned, Biden bowed to pressure from party leaders. abandoned his bid for re-electionand supported his vice president.

It was late July, well past the point at which many Biden supporters and some experts predicted the process of changing candidates would be too late. They warned that there was no real precedent for such a dramatic move. Moreover, they argued, Harris was not popular enough or politically experienced enough to lead the party, especially with so little time to launch the operation. The most compelling argument against Biden dropping out of the race is New Yorker‘s Jay Caspian Kang had written that to combat Trump’s “chaos” it would “perhaps be better to present the most stable and known option.”