The 2024 United States presidential elections have become an action and suspense film in which the intrigue about the outcome remains completely alive after several unexpected script twists. There is still a month of footage left until voting day and the narrative seems somewhat stagnant. In the absence of any major news and in the face of the technical tie that the polls point to, the two presidential candidates, Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris, are battling tirelessly in the seven states that have the keys to the White House. The attacks intensify. Trump wades through the mud of insults and incessant lies, while Kamala Harris also enters the field of personal disqualifications with the help of Republicans who deny the former president.
After this week’s debate between the vice presidential candidates, there is no date especially marked on the agenda until the day of the vote itself, November 5, the Tuesday following the first Monday of the month, as mandated by the Constitution. What lies ahead is a long-distance race full of rallies and an unprecedented advertising bombardment, since the campaigns of both candidates have their bags full.
The campaign has been full of surprises that have turned expectations upside down. The president, Joe Biden, in his quest for re-election, thought that a good performance in an early morning debate against Trump could clear up doubts about his ability to lead the country for four more years, despite the fact that he would renew the position at 82 years old. . It failed miserably. When he went from the phase of denial to that of acceptance, he handed over the baton to Kamala Harris, the first presidential candidate of one of the two major parties since 1968 to be crowned candidate without having participated in the primaries. Harris breathed fresh air and filled the Democratic campaign with enthusiasm.
Opposite, Donald Trump has suffered two attempts to end his life. In the first, in Butler (Pennsylvania), he escaped being murdered by a matter of centimeters. In the second, at his golf club in Florida, he was not in imminent danger. Trump spoke about how he experienced the attack that injured his ear in his acceptance speech at the Republican convention and assured that he would not speak about it again. He hasn’t stopped doing it. This Saturday, in fact, he returns to the crime scene to hold a rally in exactly the same place where he was shot and will be accompanied by the richest man in the world, Elon Musk.
Crossing of insults
Trump and Harris have greeted each other only once, in the debate between them on September 10 and which ended in victory for the Democrat. The former president has refused to participate in new face-to-face meetings, so the duel between the two takes place at a distance. Trump has descended into the realm of insult: “Corrupt Joe Biden became mentally deficient. Sad. But liar Kamala Harris, I honestly think she was born that way. Something’s wrong with Kamala. And I don’t know what it is, but there’s definitely something wrong with him, everyone knows,” he said last weekend in Erie, Pennsylvania. In addition, he has tried to politicize the response to the hurricane with lies about Biden and Harris Helene, which has left at least 215 dead.
Harris, for her part, has disqualified Trump as someone who “violated his oath to defend the Constitution,” in reference to his refusal to accept his 2020 defeat and the assault on the Capitol. To do this, she had former congresswoman Liz Cheney as a guest on Thursday at a rally in Ripon (Pennsylvania), the birthplace of the Republican Party. It was the Republican who took on the dirty work of the insult by calling Trump “petty, vindictive and cruel.”
Donald Trump, this week in Valdosta (Georgia), one of the areas hit by Hurricane ‘Helene’.Michael M. Santiago (Getty Images)
In the midst of this extreme polarization, the former president plays the card of xenophobia, racism and fear, blaming immigration for all evils. Republicans also insist on inflation and the alleged threat that Harris represents to the economy, the issue to which voters give the most importance. Trump apocalyptically describes a country that is sinking, with a continuous invasion of illegal immigrants turning cities into a hell of insecurity.
Events are actually working against them. Border crossings have fallen drastically with the latest measures approved by Joe Biden’s Government. And in the economy, although the price increases over the last four years weigh on citizens’ spirits, the elections come at a sweet time. In September, 254,000 jobs were created and unemployment fell to 4.1%, once again chasing away the specter of a recession. Inflation has fallen to 2.5% and salaries have been gaining purchasing power for many months. The Federal Reserve has begun to lower interest rates, consumer spending remains buoyant, and the economy is growing healthily. Even the threat of a long dockworkers’ strike that would strangle the supply chain has evaporated.
What has become complicated is the international situation, with the wars in Ukraine, Israel and Lebanon. Arab Americans remain outraged by the Biden administration’s support for Israel and it is not clear that Harris can escape a punishing vote – or abstention –, especially in Michigan, one of the key states in which the difference in the polls is narrow
Political scientists often refer to the “October surprise” as an unforeseen event or revelation that arises close to the election and can change the course of the campaign. This year, however, after the historic surprises of June, July, August and September, the bar is very high. The month began with the rare support of Melania Trump, the candidate’s wife, for abortion and with the dissemination of a devastating prosecutor’s report with new evidence about Trump’s “desperate” attempts to steal the 2020 elections. The voters However, they seem cured of their horror and the Republican, the first convicted felon with a chance of being elected president, has managed to clear his judicial agenda until after the elections.
Whoever wins, she will make history, either as the first president to regain office after losing it since Grover Cleveland in 1892 or as the first woman—and black—to occupy the Oval Office since the founding of the country, even if there is no made neither her race nor her sex a campaign issue. Both candidates present themselves as agents of change, but both have already had the responsibility of Government to different degrees.
After the frenetic action of the summer, the plot of the election film is now moving slowly. The plot thread is repeated and the polls are almost frozen. They grant a victory in the popular vote to the Democrat, but are inconclusive in the electoral college, which elects the president. What keeps viewers in suspense is the suspense, which will not be resolved, at least, until the week of the elections, without any post-credits scenes being ruled out.
