Staff Writer, and President of KCL American Politics Society, Patrick Schnecker dives into the unprecedented 2024 U.S. Presidential Election, analysing the race between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, and the political turbulence shaping their campaigns.
This article was first published in print on 16 September 2024.
A convicted felon, a drop-out incumbent and an undemocratic, Democrat nominee. No, this is not a Netflix reboot of ‘The Politician’, it is the current state of the 2024 American Presidential Election.
We are less than two months away from polling day and are experiencing American politics at its finest. Or at least apolitical viewers are. Republicans and Democrats, on the other hand, are seeing new polls every day, portraying their respective nominee in a different light each time and wondering why their party is where it is at this moment.
A Successful ‘Witch Hunt’?
The Republican Party, for the third consecutive election led by Donald Trump, has experienced the most volatile, turbulent period in recent history. However, this all seemed to be leading to a Trump landslide in November.
For once, Trump was not being seen as the bully but rather as the bullied. Whether it was being prosecuted—specifically people viewing it as Biden pursuing his political opponent—and being found guilty on 34 counts during his ‘hush money’ trial, or being saved from an assassination attempt by a milimetric head tilt, Trump’s persona was being glorified—dare I say deified—by American conservatives, as well as by streams of the moderate public.
These attempts to prevent the 45th U.S. President from running directly translated into a huge boom in Trump’s polling rate. But this wasn’t the only thing going Trump’s way.
After many years of the GOP being, arguably, more divided than ever, it appears to have reached a new point of general unity. From former intra-party critics of Trump, such as Nikki Haley or Ron DeSantis, publicly endorsing the former president’s re-election bid to the wider Republican voting class overwhelmingly supporting the New Yorker — both grassroots Republicans and the influential bureaucrats now back a second Trump presidency.
The question is why so many have changed their minds so radically. The reality is that even Republicans who don’t necessarily like Trump will vote for whoever the alternative to the current Democrat is. This is called negative partisanship and is, arguably, what lost Trump the vote in 2020. People consider elections as referendums on the incumbent and in 2020, Americans became tired of Trump, hence his loss. Well now, they are more concerned about the Biden administration and Kamala Harris’ capability as a leader, than another Trump presidency.
From Unstable to Unable
On the other side of the House, the Democratic Party has similarly experienced much irregularity, yet with more failures than the Republicans.
As already mentioned, the view that Biden weaponised the judicial system to imprison his main political opponent over a case many believe should have been dismissed, not even trialled in the state of New York, significantly damaged the Democrats’ case for upholding ‘fair elections’.
Moreover, after three years of what can only be described as intra-party denialism, grassroots liberals in conjunction with top Democrat officials have finally recognised the main concerns raised by Biden’s presidency.
Biden’s visible decline in health and, consequently, competency was key to this. The first presidential debate of 2024, where Biden gave the worst public speaking performance of his career, and, likely, of any president in American history, was the last straw for Democrats.
This raises two important questions:
- Why did Biden’s team agree to a debate so early? For context, the first presidential debate, at least since 1960, never took place before September 21 of the election year.
- If they had followed a standard election calendar and had the debate in September, would the Democrats—in particular, Biden—be in more or less trouble?
To answer the second one, if the Democrats wanted to swap Biden out in September, it would have been after the Democratic National Convention, which took place on 19 August, where the party officially named its nominee. This is where the Democrats would, presumably, have tried to enact the 25th Amendment, claiming that Biden was “unable to discharge the powers and duties of the office”.
Thankfully for the Democratic Party, this is no longer a worry after the 46th President officially announced he is no longer running for re-election, instead choosing to endorse the current Vice President, Kamala Harris.
Prosecutor vs. Felon
Harris’ rushed and late campaign is shaping up to be a very interesting one, both in terms of strategy and public appeal.
The Democrats will undoubtedly try to frame the election between Harris and Trump as a battle between a prosecution and a felon, under the slogan of “prosecutor for president”. Harris’ team will exploit the fact that Trump is a newly convicted felon and that she has many years of experience as a prosecuting lawyer, as District Attorney in San Francisco followed by Attorney General of California.
However, there are many doubts over whether this will work. Although in theory, it is a smart strategy, one of the main reasons why Trump’s ratings are so high is the very fact that he is a convicted felon and the Republicans have effectively portrayed Harris and Biden as going after him illegally, resembling autocratic leadership.
Furthermore, Harris has historically been scrutinised for various inconsistent standpoints during her time as Attorney General. For instance, while Harris was responsible for the conviction of more than 1900 individuals related to cannabis possession or use in San Francisco, she then admitted to having smoked cannabis in her past. This may come back to haunt the Democratic nominee, solidifying Republican claims of her inconsistent policy standpoints.
An Illiberal Liberal
Another issue with Harris now being the Democratic nominee, from an outsider’s perspective, is the process she got nominated through. Instead of Biden pulling out of the race during the primaries, and giving the Democratic Party electorate the opportunity to vote in Harris, they waited for the primaries to end before making the change in nominees themselves.
Why is that? A safe assumption to make is that Biden and Harris’ teams were afraid that the Vice President would not be able to defeat candidates such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (RFK Jr.), who originally ran as a Democrat before switching to independent, and Marianne Williamson—a renowned American author and political activist.
Indeed, some members of Biden’s team, such as his wife, Jill Biden, may have genuinely believed that the political veteran had a shot at winning re-election. Yet, is such speculation an honest attempt to understand the thought process behind Biden’s pre-debate campaign, or is it just another form of justifying the same denialism of before?
In all fairness, Biden’s staff had a point. As low as Biden’s approval ratings were in January 2024, when the primaries commenced, Harris had a pitiful disapproval rating of over 55%. So, although it was a wise tactical decision, insofar as guaranteeing Harris the party’s nomination, this strategy really undermines the Democrats’ campaign promise to “save democracy” from Trump and the GOP. Likewise, Harris’ campaign slogan from 2020 — “For the people” — seems largely ironic, if not hypocritical, with all this in mind.
A Game Of Odds
If the 2024 presidential election is conveyed as a referendum against the sitting president and his party, it almost guarantees Trump his victory. The American electorate has spoken — with July polls suggesting an all-time low approval rating of 32%, Biden’s poor economic agenda, unstable foreign affairs and dangerous domestic policy will be heavily considered on the ballot, despite his name not being there.
Harris has one stronghold over Trump, but she has to use it very carefully. If she successfully depicts Trump as a criminal, whilst causing the former president to lose his temper and resort to inflammatory language similar to 2020, Harris has a great chance to swing many moderates back to the blue corner. This has already begun to emerge with Trump coming under fire for questioning Harris’ ethnicity as a black woman.
Similarly, the issue of abortion—as in every election year—could play a key role in deciding the victor. Whilst Harris’ condemnatory portrayal of Trump’s abortion policies may help her re-enforce the blue vote, swinging independents from Trump might be harder than it sounds. Contrary to DeSantis’s unapologetic pro-life agenda, for example, Trump’s advocacy for giving each state’s government the power to decide their abortion laws doesn’t sound as radical as it once did.
Ultimately, the 2024 election will be one of the most dramatic races in recent history where everything can be decided in the final hours. We have to remember: one day in American politics is equivalent to one year in the ‘real world’.
