Beyond the Vote: What lessons can be learned from the 2024 election?

The 2024 U.S. presidential election was historic on so many fronts. Donald Trump became the first president in more than a century to win non-consecutive terms. This also showcases how Donald Trump is truly a once-in-a-century political figure that may never be replicated in America or even around the world. But what can the 2024 election results really teach us on the rapidly changing political landscape in America? Why did it go so wrong for the Democrats? And where do we go from here?

When I say Donald Trump is a once-in-a-lifetime political candidate, I truly mean that. If we go back to 2015 and that famous escalator ride where Trump announced he was running for president, nobody in America took him seriously. People described his campaign in 2015 as nothing more than a TV stunt, and everyone was sure and certain that his campaign would not last to the first primaries in Iowa. And when you think about it, can you really blame them?

For a long time, running a political campaign in America was like walking in a minefield, whether you were running for president, the Senate, the House, or governor—any democratically elected role. You had to be extremely careful and cautious of what you say, when you say it, who you say it to, and how you conduct yourself on the campaign trail. Any misstep or awkward moment could literally cost you your campaign, and this was why we saw the introduction of the teleprompter in the early 1950s. The goal was to try to limit any potential damage candidates could inflict during a rally or an event and force them to stay on message and on speech—a speech that is carefully vetted and analyzed by campaign staff beforehand and that is read word-for-word by the candidate. For almost 70 years, this was the norm in America. Political candidates were so reliant on teleprompters that they would often freeze if any malfunction happened, not even daring to say a word off-script. This was until Donald Trump came onto the scene.

As with any candidate running for president, Donald Trump's past and history started to come to light on the campaign trail back in 2015, and this is where people really drafted him out. In a time when a single misstep or past misbehavior that comes to light could cost you a campaign, let's just say that Donald Trump's history wasn't perfect. This was not helped by the way he conducted himself on the campaign trail, often going off-message, waging personal attacks on his opponents, and using social media in a way that even the most lenient folks would call unpresidential. Trump's comments on the campaign trail, and especially during the Republican debates, were really where people thought it was only a matter of time before his numbers dropped and he left the race. I mean, think about it—remember Howard Dean from 2004? A presidential candidate that dropped out of the race after his numbers plummeted following a campaign event where he, quote: "laughed too hard." Yes, believe it or not, an awkward laugh cost him his campaign, and looking at the stuff Donald Trump was doing and saying, a laugh seemed mild in comparison.

Yet, incredibly, it seemed that the more Donald Trump ramped up the attacks, the more he became unhinged, the more his popularity increased, and the more his numbers went up. People said his campaign would not last 24 hours; then they said he would not make it past the debates; then they said he would not make it past Iowa. And after he became the presidential nominee, Democrats were in a state of joy, many saying it was impossible for Trump to be elected and that the 2016 race would not even be close, in a time when Barack Obama was still very popular among a large group of voters and with Hillary Clinton winning the nomination, looking to become the first female president of the U.S. Even some Republican pundits at the time thought the race was over before it even began, and this Democratic confidence also showed in the polls, where Clinton was leading in double digits for the entire 2016 campaign. What proceeded to happen is known by everyone, and Donald Trump pulled the most unexpected political victory in the history of America. A businessman who became a politician just a year ago, with a past filled with controversies and a campaign filled with insults and unhinged moments, Donald Trump was now the leader of the free world. The 2016 race really set the way Trump conducted himself in 2024. So, enough about 2016; let's take a look at the historic campaign of 2024.

Before we begin to talk about the 2024 campaign, you have to acknowledge the baggage that Donald Trump carried into 2024. This was a former president who was impeached twice, accused of inciting a riot, who tried to overturn the 2020 election, a president who called the Georgia Secretary of State and asked him to find 11,780 votes for him out of thin air so he could win the state of Georgia, a president who was indicted four times, and who was convicted on 34 felony counts while being at the same time accused of sexual abuse and found guilty in a court of law. Just think about all this baggage for a second—any candidate having 10% of that coming into an election would not last an hour. But Donald Trump was different.

There is no denying that Democrats were worried about the concept of having Donald Trump on the ballot again. It was only a matter of time after Trump announced he was looking to run again in 2024, after the midterm elections, that the indictments started flowing. They even tried to remove his name from the ballot in some states and turned a heavily politicized DOJ against him, looking for ways to imprison him before the election. The main goal of the Democratic Party was basically to try and make him look so bad in front of the general public that there was no way he would survive politically. I mean, when was the last time you had a presidential nominee dragged to a court in Manhattan in the middle of an election season? Well, never, and Democrats were just waiting for the dominos to fall and for Trump to be forced to either withdraw his candidacy or be disqualified from running in the first place, no matter the way.

But again and again, we were reminded of how unusual a political candidate Donald Trump really is. They threw everything but the kitchen sink at him in the hopes of hurting his reputation and drawing some of his support out, but no matter how many times he was dragged into a court of law, no matter how many times he was indicted, convicted, found guilty, or found liable (choose any term you want), his popularity only increased, and his poll numbers only doubled. To the point where the Republican 2024 primaries turned out to be just a bunch of people waiting to see if the Democrats succeed in outing Trump to see if they had a chance at running because they knew they did not stand a chance with him in the race. Even Trump knew that; that's why he did not bother to show up for any Republican debate. And if you think about it, why would he have to go on TV to debate a bunch of people when he has more than 90% of the Republican base? Donald Trump just became too strong and too popular for anyone to stand against him, at least in the Republican Party. To the point where there was no other choice; most Republicans had to fall in line with him, and those who refused were considered outsiders and almost cast out of the party with no chance of holding any office again. Even Republicans who ran against him in the primaries were extremely cautious about what they said about him in the hopes of saving their chances for the 2028 race. Even Nikki Haley, who spent almost a year heavily criticizing Trump, had to fall in line to save her political future. And as time went on, it became clear that Trump was inevitable, and a rematch between Trump and Biden looked more and more likely.

If we dig deeper into the 2024 election and how we got here, it's hard to be really surprised by how decisive the Trump win was, because for a very long time, the writing has been on the wall, and throwing blame around is not really constructive. But looking at things objectively, Trump's win was as much the making of Democrat mistakes as it was due to his unwavering popularity.

Let's start with Joe Biden. When Joe Biden decided to run in 2020, he referred to himself as a "transition president," with the sole objective of, quote: "saving the country from Donald Trump." After winning the election in 2020, he became the oldest president to ever be elected to office, and as the following months and years went by, it became more and more clear that Joe Biden did not have another four years in the tank to perform the most demanding and stressful job in the world. Aging started to look clear on him, and America ended up with an entire administration of gaffes and missteps—the examples are too many to cite. But as time went by, it became clear that Joe Biden would not stand a chance against an increasingly popular Trump, even before we went into the election year and even before the disastrous debate performance in June of this year.

It was not much better in terms of policy. Every president reaches a time in their administration where they have to look back and assess how things have been going and analyze what it is going to mean for the upcoming election. This usually happens about a year before an election, and in Joe Biden's case, it's really hard to make the case on why he eventually decided to proceed and run for re-election. His approval ratings were at a dismal low, and in every single major issue that affects an election, the Joe Biden administration's performance was mediocre, to say the least. Most notably, inflation reached 9.1% for the first time in 40 years; illegal immigration numbers went through the roof; two regional wars broke out in the span of a year; with an America where 60% of folks are living paycheck to paycheck. The disconnect about all these major issues, especially the economy, also played a role in fueling Joe Biden's increased unpopularity. When your current administration keeps trying to gaslight you into believing that "Bidenomics" (whoever came up with that name should be fired) is working while you're struggling to get by, this is only going to lead to more discontent among voters who feel that their government is living in a state of denial while they're hardly trying to make ends meet.

This is where I think the entourage of Joe Biden really failed him. I'm pretty sure that, in his mind, he had a mission to defeat Donald Trump again and was hoping to pull off another 2020. But this is where the people close to him should have interfered, especially high decision-makers within the Democratic Party, who should have gone to him in 2023 and asked him to step aside so they could have a thorough and democratic primary process and elect a new face at the top of the ticket. Instead, they chose to watch Joe Biden's popularity and physical capabilities decline for more than a year without lifting a finger and only went into panic mode after we saw what was arguably the worst debate performance since the implementation of political debates in America. And with only four months left before election day, the Democrats knew that it was already too late to conduct a thorough primary to select a new candidate. They had a choice to either stick with Biden and most probably lose or force him to drop out and go with his vice president in hopes of giving themselves a fighting chance. They chose the second option, not knowing that it would do more harm than good.

For a long period of time, one of the main lines of attack used by the Democrats against Donald Trump was that he was a threat to democracy, mainly referring to his efforts to alter the results of the 2020 election. However, dropping Joe Biden from the ticket and hand-picking his vice president to replace him—someone, I should mention, who tried to run for president in 2019 and dropped out even before the first primary as she was polling at less than 1% without ever receiving a single vote from any Democratic voter—did not land very well with the voters and gave Republicans a new line of attack against the Democrats, who not only changed the rules of their presidential primaries to block anyone from running against Joe Biden, most notably Robert Kennedy Jr., who tried to run against Biden but was blocked every step of the way in many ways, but also proceeded to cast out a sitting president who had already received more than 14 million votes. This made any attempt from Democrats to label Trump as a threat to democracy fall on deaf ears as Republicans now had a clear response to those claims.

Now, let's talk about Kamala Harris. For what it's worth, it's impossible to deny that the environment surrounding the 2024 election would have been extremely challenging for any Democrat running against Trump, mainly because of the peak dissatisfaction with the current administration, with damning exit polls showing that more than 60% of voters think the country is headed on the wrong track. We saw this not only in the results but also in the House and Senate races, where Republicans are expected to make a clean sweep and control both chambers of Congress. But the fact that Kamala Harris was all along a part of this administration and was next to Joe Biden in every decision made and every policy enacted made it arguably ten times more difficult for her to build her case for change. One of her main campaign slogans was "turning the page," which is a weird message given that she's been in the White House for four years. If she had any chance of challenging Donald Trump in this election, she had to completely distance herself from Joe Biden and all of his administration's policies, which would have also been hard to do, as it would have swayed off a number of loyal Democratic voters who would have accused her of turning on her boss and running away from her record as vice president. So, for her entire campaign, which lasted only 100 days, Kamala Harris was walking a very fine line between selling herself as the candidate of change and selling a new way forward, while also staying loyal to the Democratic base of Joe Biden to avoid any internal conflict within the party. This turned out to be too much for her to handle, and the final nail in the coffin came during an interview with The View, where she was asked what she would have done differently from Joe Biden, to which she said, "There is nothing that comes to mind." It is just astonishing that she did not see this question coming or prepare for it and had to blank and give an answer that most probably doomed her campaign and gave Republicans a whole new line of ads and attacks to go after her.

Kamala Harris also spent way too much time focusing on Donald Trump and trying to portray how bad and evil he would be for America without really offering much herself in terms of policies and how she would change the course of the country. It took her more than a month to do her first public interview, which was done by Dana Bash on CNN in an extremely favorable environment, and it also took her a lot of time to offer any economic policies herself. Even when she did, it was just a list of stuff that sounds good on paper, like the $6,000 child tax credit and the $25,000 first-time home buyer assistance, but without really giving much detail on how she would enact those policies and, most importantly, pay for them. Whenever she was asked for specifics, she kept dancing around the subject, sometimes changing the topic completely. What was even worse was her response when asked how she would handle inflation and the increase in consumer prices, which came down to what she referred to as "price gouging." Price gouging and what it entails is too long to explain here, but I will only say that this is a policy only used in communist societies like China and Romania, not in capitalist economies and certainly nothing ever seen in the U.S. market, and it's no surprise that this did not land well with voters.

When it came to the issue of immigration, it was also not great for the Harris campaign, as the only line that Kamala Harris had was to blame Donald Trump for the fact that the border security bill did not pass in Congress, and accused him of blocking the bill for political gains, which may or may not be true; I guess we will never know for certain. But what is particularly fascinating is the fact that it was through executive orders that the Biden administration opened up the southern border, and Harris's only defense is that the border is broken only because Congress refused to pass a bill. She dodged every question that asked her specifically if the Biden administration's executive action on the border is also to blame for the immigration crisis in a fiery interview with Bret Baier on Fox News.

When it came to foreign policy, specifically the war in Gaza, Harris and her campaign tried to play a dangerous game of flip-flop to win over both sides, saying that Israel has a right to defend itself and that she will continue to provide military aid to Netanyahu's regime, while also pushing for the rights of the Palestinian people and their right to self-determination and boycotting Netanyahu's address in the US congress. This ended up backfiring on her as neither side chose to support her, labeling her as a hypocrite, which offered Donald Trump the endorsement of the Arab community in Dearborn, Michigan, as well as the Jewish vote in most parts of the country.

On the other hand, Donald Trump and his team were really efficient in offering specific policies that really resonated well with voters, especially in the Great Lake states, like ending taxes on tips and Social Security benefits, cutting energy prices in half, and reinvesting in drilling and fracking, which is a key job creator in the critical state of Pennsylvania, among many others. Trump also did not necessarily dive into the details of how he would implement those policies, but he did not have to, as they resonated so well with voters that they were willing to take the bet without many details.

In terms of foreign policy, Trump pledged to end the wars in Ukraine and Gaza on day 1, claims which he was able to back from the fact that he had no wars in his first administration, even though everyone accused him in 2016 of being likely to lead the U.S. into a global war if elected.

Finally, Democrats really need to take a look at the coalition that ended up electing Donald Trump as it ended up being the most diverse coalition to ever elect a republican president. This should sound every alarm within the party because for a very long time, the Democratic Party took the Latino and Black vote in America for granted without ever really listening to their struggles, to the point where we have reached a time where a Republican candidate has now received more than 45% of the Latino vote in this election and 25% of the Black vote, which is something unprecedented and something that is really hurting Democrats by taking more and more states off "the swing state label", like Florida, which was not so long ago considered a swing state due to its diverse Latino population that tended to skew heavily for the Democrats. Donald Trump won Florida by more than 13 points this cycle, which tops most safe Republican states like Texas or Wyoming, and it's hard to see Florida ever returning to be a contested state.

All of these factors made it really hard to predict anything but a sweeping Trump win. Now that the 2024 election is over, and the pundits and analysts will do their job and dive deeper into the numbers, but the bottom line is that this election was really a wake-up call for the Democratic Party, as it is clear that in an extremely divided America, blind party loyalty is no longer a thing, and both parties are going to have to follow up on their pledges and start listening to their electorate or face the consequences.