Trump or Harris? The Mysterious Case of the 2024 Election
The outcome in the seven swing states is unknowable. Or is it eight battlegrounds? Even that's still murky after a shock Iowa poll.
I’ve been reading mysteries and procedurals by the dozen to get me through the 2024 campaign season, and they have been a comfort. If a series has five or nine or 14 books, that brooding detective or daredevil FBI agent will definitely survive, right?
Election Day feels more fraught. More suspense, more drama, higher stakes. And it’s real life. Our lives. Our rights. Our democracy.
I’ve been in a mad rush to write everything I can, every argument I can think of, to try to persuade anyone who might have been wavering between the two major candidates, considering a third-party candidate, or thinking of sitting this one out. That phase is over. Now, we all wait.
Since I last wrote here, I’ve published five columns highlighting what’s on the ballot this fall, from Donald Trump’s deteriorating condition to Ukraine’s future to the resonance and professionalism of the Kamala Harris campaign. Here they are, starting with the most recent:
Nov. 2: Trump Wants to “Fix” Our Booming Economy. Don’t Let Him Near It.
Trump’s economic plans would be disastrous on a grand scale. He wants to slap blanket tariffs on all imports and mass deport some 11 to 12 million undocumented immigrants. That would be a hammer blow to consumers, employers, and the overall economy. Eight to nine million of these immigrants are in the U.S. workforce doing essential jobs and paying nearly $100 billion in local, state, and federal taxes. Plus it would cost taxpayers $20 billion to deport just one million of them. Trump also wants to control the powerful, traditionally independent Federal Reserve, which sets interest rates and regulates the U.S. financial system.
“We find that these steps would result in lower U.S. national income, lower employment, and higher inflation than otherwise. In some cases, economic conditions recover over time, but in others the damage continues through 2040. And despite Trump’s ‘America first’ rhetoric, these policies would harm the U.S. economy more than any other in the world,” concluded analysts with the Peterson Institute for International Economics in a report reflecting the consensus among mainstream economists across the spectrum.
Nov. 1: Donald Trump Wants to Psych You Out
SWAGGER, CHUTZPAH, EGOTISM—whatever you want to call it, Donald Trump has taken delusions of grandeur to such heights that he needs an explicit reminder: Joe Biden is president of the United States, and Trump is not.
This sounds like Civics 101, but it’s essential counterprogramming as Trump conducts faux presidential business in fake-it-till-you-make-it mode, and an inevitability narrative takes hold…
At home and with foreign leaders, Trump is acting like the Big Man on Campus, pretending he’s in charge. It’s gotten to the point where Biden and Kamala Harris both have been asked about Trump seemingly “doing diplomacy while he’s not really representing the United States.” Biden said he was not surprised. Harris said she was not concerned.
Sadly, the bluster is having its intended effect.
Oct. 28: She Started an Orchestra to Show Ukrainian Resolve to the World
CLASSICAL MUSIC RARELY MIXES OVERTLY with politics, I have found during decades of reporting and concertgoing. But Putin’s war—with its bald attempt to re-establish the principle that might makes right—makes Ukraine an exception. So there was former Polish President Lech Walesa at the freedom orchestra concert this year in Gdynia, Poland, where his Solidarity union movement was born, and according to Wilson, he said he regretted failing to gain NATO access for Ukraine during his presidency in the 1990s.
The London concert at St. Paul’s Cathedral—a setting that recalls a time when that city, like Ukraine’s cities, experienced terror and destruction from the skies—featured an appearance by Valerii Zaluzhnyi, Ukraine’s former army chief who is now its ambassador to the United Kingdom. At the Kennedy Center, State Department official Scott Weinhold said America was funding the printing of three million textbooks so Ukrainian students could learn about their own history and culture in their own language. Wilson concluded that evening with a fiery pledge to spend the rest of her life working to save and rebuild Ukraine.
She is the first to acknowledge concerts and acclaim from VIPs are no substitute for what Ukraine really wants and needs. “The concerts are extremely satisfying,” Wilson says, but they’re just a moment in time. Most of the musicians have family in Ukraine who are dying in air strikes and on the battlefield, “so the suffering hasn’t diminished in any way. And they of course feel abandoned by our government.”
Which government is that? I asked. “The Western democratic world,” Wilson said.
Oct. 27: Kamala Harris’s Full-Court Press
The Harris campaign is addressing multiple reasons Trump is unfit, and that’s as it should be. The many threats he poses to the Constitution, democracy, and the rule of law are all so grim and dangerous that it would be political malpractice to ignore any of them. But Harris, Tim Walz, and their allies are also making a positive case for their economic plans, with family-friendly tax proposals and a ban on corporate price-gouging on food. Their reproductive freedom theme is also fundamental, crucial, and deeply resonant across regions and parties.
The phrase that comes to mind is “all of the above.” It’s usually applied to energy policy. It’s even more appropriate for the Harris-Walz campaign, which must alert voters to a vast range of reasons Trump should never be president again.
After over 35 years of closely following national campaigns as a reporter, an editor, and an opinion writer, I’d judge the Harris campaign as one of the best I’ve seen. I’m not saying this because her arguments on abortion and immigration closely mirror suggestions I made in April (belated disclosure: I’m one of the obnoxious pundits offering advice). Team Harris comes up with plenty of good ideas all on its own.
Oct. 22: President Vance? Brace Yourself for It. Trump Is Already Deteriorating.
If Trump truly wins the 2024 election, this man about half his age would be next in line for the Oval Office — a prospect that is unavoidably plausible. It is hard to imagine Trump as president at 82, when his term would end, given his apparent condition even now.
Near the end of his first stint in the White House, on Jan. 6, 2021, Trump stood by as his supporters rioted at the Capitol to try to keep him in office. Though he had only two weeks remaining in power, members of his Cabinet discussed invoking the 25th Amendment to remove him and concluded that doing so wasn’t viable — particularly because vice presidents play a key role in the removal process, and Vice President Mike Pence said he was not interested.
In a second Trump administration, those discussions could happen a lot sooner. Would Vance be ambitious enough to lead an effort to remove Trump? He certainly has seemed interested in getting ahead, and quickly.
This is the first time I have seen anything about the very real threat presented by JD Vance. The media appears to have given him a free ride. Thanks for raising this issue!
Donald Trump, as bad as he is, doesn’t worry me half as much as those who support him. I’m still trying to get my head around the fact that half of American voters are ready to return to the Oval Office a man who doesn’t believe in democracy, has neither respect nor regard for the COnstution or the rule of law, and has never shown the least interest in anyone but himself and his own pursuits.
What really worries me is that even if Trump loses tomorrow, there are those waiting in the wings who are far more capable of his worst tendencies than he is.