I am writing this on Halloween, October 31, 2024. You may be reading this after the 2024 U.S. election, in which case you know what happened and I don’t!

Parts of this op-ed in Project Syndicate by a political science professor surprised me.

Others grew alienated during the grueling experience of the Trump presidency. For some Republicans (and independents), the last straw was his loyalty to himself over his party and country when it came to endorsing candidates and dealing with foreign allies and adversaries. For others, it was his pandering to evangelicals, his embrace of isolationism, and his indulgence of racist white nationalists. For still others, it was his attempt to steal the 2020 election, culminating in the uniquely shameful attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. Most Democrats and many independents, of course, have resisted Trump from the start.

Thus, the reason Trump isn’t running away with the 2024 election is Trump himself. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that the Republicans would be the favorites in a normal year with a normal candidate. But 2024 is not a normal year, because Trump is not a normal candidate.

The American electorate’s decision is being influenced both by the quotidian concerns that usually structure election outcomes and by one outsize personality. Never has the latter been such a key consideration. Hundreds of thousands of voters – perhaps millions – are putting aside their party loyalty, policy priorities, and complaints about current conditions to stand against a candidate they consider unfit for the presidency and unworthy of election. We will soon know whether politics as usual or unusual politics will carry the day.

I am surprised by the idea that a “more normal” Republican would be running away with the election. I think it is more likely that an “average Republican” would be hard to distinguish from Kamala Harris who, other than a mildly interesting personal history consisting of being a mixed-race childless cat lady, is a very “average Democrat”.

The Democrats delivered Social Security almost a century ago and Medicare more than half a century ago. These programs are hugely beneficial to voters. However, they have been around for so long that voters take them for granted and do not connect them to the Democratic Party. Since enactment of these programs, Democrats have made many promises to middle class voters and almost entirely failed to deliver on them. (Obamacare might be the biggest success from this period – it was certainly the absolute most that was politically possible at that moment, and much better than nothing, but also much less than fully satisfying. My family would have to pay about $2500 a month out of pocket for coverage, just for the privilege of then paying more when we go to the doctor. This is not affordable or acceptable to the people who need the program most, which are middle income people in the gap between corporate employer-provided coverage and piss-poor quality but free Medicaid for low income people.) So from the Democrats we get positive messages coupled with utter failure to deliver. The Republicans promise nothing and deliver nothing to the middle class. The Democrats’ failure to deliver allows Republicans to focus entirely on negative messaging around things like taxes and immigration, which connects the middle class with people and policies to blame for our misery. The connections are logically and empirically almost entirely false, but the misery is very real. So the election ends up being a referendum against a bland average administration people connect with that misery. My guess would be Trump’s personality turns people on and off in about equal measure, so I suspect substituting a bland average Republican for him (see 2020 Joe Biden) would still result in a near-tossup election.

Don’t get me wrong. My fingers are crossed for Kamala Harris and a Democratic majority in Congress. Another Democratic administration will not deliver for the middle class, but it is much more likely to inch us in the right direction on climate change and manage risk created by the various international crises. These are existential risks, and re-electing Trump just fans the flames of some very, very bad possibilities that could bring down our nation or even our global civilization. To deliver for the middle class, we would need to modernize our constitution, end the control of government policy by wealthy and powerful corporations and billionaires, and get rid of the current insurmountable barriers for candidates outside of the two dominant parties.