Prof John Rennie Short
Emeritus Professor at the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. He is the author of 60 books, including Stress Testing The USA (2021, 2nd ed), many articles in academic journals and the popular press and his recent book Insurrection: What the January 6th Assault on The Capitol Reveals about America and Democracy, won the HistorywithJackson book of the year award for 2024.
Email: jrs@umbc.edu
U.S. Election 2024
36. The tilted playing field, and a bygone conclusion (Dr David Karpf)
37. Looking forwards and looking back: Competing visions of America in the 2024 presidential campaign (Prof John Rennie Short)
38. Brat went splat: Or the emotional sticky brand won again (Prof Ken Cosgrove)
39. Election 2024: Does money matter anymore? (Prof Cayce Myers)
40. Advertising trends in the 2024 presidential race (Prof Travis N. Ridout, Prof Michael M. Franz, Prof Erika Franklin Fowler)
41. Who won the ground wars? Trump and Harris field office strategies in 2024 (Sean Whyard, Dr Joshua P. Darr)
42. Kamala Harris: Idealisation and persecution (Dr Amy Tatum)
43. Kamala Harris campaign failed to keep Democratic social coalition together (Prof Anup Kumar)
44. Revisiting Indian-American identity in the 2024 U.S. presidential election (Dr Madhavi Reddi)
45. Harris missed an opportunity to sway swing voters by not morally reframing her message (Prof John H. Parmelee)
46. In pursuit of the true populist at the dawn of America’s golden age (Dr Carl Senior)
47. Language and the floor in the 2024 Harris vs Trump televised presidential debate (Dr Sylvia Shaw)
48. Nullifying the noise of a racialized claim: Nonverbal communication and the 2024 Harris-Trump debate (Prof Erik P. Bucy)
49. A pseudo-scientific revolution? The puzzling relationship between science deference and denial (Dr Matt Motta)
50. Amidst recent lows for women congressional candidates, women at the state level thrive (Dr Jordan Butcher)
On the Republican side: It started with a presidential candidate, Donald Trump, marching towards the Republican Party’s nomination while also facing a series of legal challenges. His days were spent shuffling between campaign and court appearances. He was mired in ongoing legal woes. He faced 91 felony counts in state courts and federal districts. As he won state primaries, he lost court cases. In May 2023, a jury found him guilty of sexual assault and defamation against E. Jean Carroll. In a second defamation trial that began on January 16th 2024, the day after he won Iowa, the jury ordered him to pay damages to Carroll of $83.3 million. In February in a civil suit brought by New York State alleging fraud in property assessments, a judge ruled against Trump and ordered him to pay $544 million and barred him from running a business in New York State. In March 2023 he was charged by the Manhattan District Attorney with felony charges of falsifying business records to pay hush money to women claiming that they had sexual relationships with Trump. A jury found him guilty on 34 charges. He became the first President to be convicted of felony crimes.
A presidential candidate marching to an easy victory for his party’s nomination at the same time as he faced a barrage of legal challenges. All of this was unimaginable just ten years ago. But Trump has generated more norm busting, rule breaking and the upending of established practices than any previous president.
On the Democratic side: there was the dramatic change in leadership. The ageing process was cruelly revealed in Biden’s June 28th presidential debate with Trump. He mumbled and stumbled. He looked old and more ready for assisted living in a retirement home than four more years in the White House. After prompting from Democratic power broker Nancy Pelosi, as well as pressure from big donors, Biden withdrew from the race and vice president Kamala Harris quickly emerged as the unchallenged Democratic candidate. There was some disquiet at the lack of a nomination race, but the lingering fears soon disappeared as Kamala energized the base, attracted crowds and generated a huge amount of money from donors. But it was not enough to secure victory. There was a shift to Trump across the country, in urban as well as rural areas, by Hispanic voters, in minority districts and by young (18-34) and older voters (65+).
The election year of 2024 had a Janus-faced quality. Trump looked backwards. Sometimes way back. In one speech in Greenville NC, he invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. For those of the for those of you not familiar, it was a law written at the time of fear of a French invasion and fears of disloyalty and allowed the government to deport non-citizens en masse. It was used by Roosevelt in World War 2 to detain thousands of Japanese Americans. Trump lived in an America of the rear-view mirror: The family structure and race relations of the 1950s, the urban America of riots and crime of the 1980s, the gender relations of before MeToo movement. He had litany of complaints about the past. He repeatedly claimed that the 2020 election was stolen from him. The future involved revenge and retribution. His message especially resonated with those groups who had seen a relative decline in their standards of living, most notably noncollege educated white males. Others were dissatisfied with illegal immigration across the southern border and rising prices. In contrast, the Harris campaign was built on the idea of a better future. What it lacked in granular detail and policy specifics it filled with the grand gestures of forward progress. The campaign slogan was We are not going back.
In the 2024 elections, one looked backwards to an unfolding story of deterioration and decline, the other look forward with optimism and hope. Underlying the differences were different visions of the USA, competing narratives of decline and renewal. These clashing contrasting visions remained solid realities despite all the power of the campaigns, the television commercials, celebrity endorsements, rallies and events. There was some movement at the very edges of each voting bloc, all as it turned in favor of the Republicans but at their core was a granitelike resistance immune to persuasion.
In 2024, the USA elected a felon. He tapped fears of ‘illegal immigrants’, anger at the ‘establishment’ and outright rage against the ‘elites.’ His supporters hope for a strong man to lead the country out of darkness. His detractors see a danger to democracy. The election provided a winner but did not heal the country’s divide; it reinforced the polarization in a USA that now has competing ‘truth’ communities, with their different ‘facts’ and their separate visions of the past and the future.