Slate takes final stock of just how Not Normal this election was.
A little over a year ago, when this election cycle was just cranking up, I wrote an essay in Slate about how nothing about the 2024 presidential election would be normal.
Not to brag, but—I was totally right! A twice-impeached former president in the midst of multiple criminal trials, fresh off an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol that left several dead, easily carried the Republican primary. The Democratic incumbent seemed to malfunction on live TV, then was forced out of the campaign after everyone from Sen. Joe Manchin to George Clooney begged him to step down. His vice president, who didn’t just lose the 2020 presidential primary but flamed out in a morass of campaign drama and policy incoherence, became the candidate, as Democrats fell in line with minimal grumbling faster than you could say “coconut tree.” And yet, as Kamala Harris rode a wave of vibes-based enthusiasm and new putatively damning information came out about Donald Trump, the polls barely moved at all. Who will win tomorrow? It’s a coin flip.
So, yes, none of this has been “normal.” But in the near-decade that Trump has been at the center of our presidential politics, the abnormal has become the norm. And it’s not just about one man. The entire GOP, one of just two major parties we have, has fully warped itself and its base in Trump’s image, driving the nation to the brink of authoritarianism. Its leaders have backed insurrectionists and refused to acknowledge that Trump lost the last election. They have endorsed alarming propositions, including the prosecution of journalists, the use of the military to suppress protest, and the weaponization of the Justice Department against political opponents. The base hasn’t just gone along with it—they’ve loved it. Republican voter enthusiasm is significantly higher now than it was just before the 2016 election.
The Trump experience has mapped out a long-term plan for the GOP. From now on, as long as this Republican Party is involved, elections will no longer be contests between two competing visions for governance. They will be fights between democracy and its demise. If there’s one big takeaway from the 2024 election cycle, it’s that there may never be another “normal” election again.
Some have argued that Trump is singular. Perhaps his proprietary blend of celebrity, wealth, shamelessness, dark charisma, powers of intimidation, and talent for manipulating the news cycle—which has granted him the voter enthusiasm and broad impunity that’s kept him on top—is irreplicable by any future candidate. But Trumpism didn’t start with Trump. He needed an already craven and strongman-curious Republican Party to secure the nomination in 2016. And even after he lost the 2020 election, GOP voters and (eventually) officials still gave him their full backing this time around. Even when Trump goes away for good someday, as all we mortals must, the damage he has done—to his party, our public trust in elections, and our expectations for political leaders—will take generations to undo, if it’s possible to undo at all.
More immediately, if Trump wins this time, we will likely enter a new era of authoritarianism that will erode American democracy beyond recognition and repair: violent clampdowns on protest, widespread attempts to overturn other election results, and such complete right-wing domination of the judiciary that egregious assaults on voting rights and the rule of law sail untouched through the courts. It’s difficult to imagine ending those four years with a free and fair election held between two candidates relatively bound by truth, a commitment to democracy, and a pledge to accept the results.
Even if Trump loses this time around, there will be no going back to the era of “normal” elections. The most glaring sign that we’ve turned a permanent corner is Trump’s vice presidential pick and heir apparent. His previous one, Mike Pence, was beholden enough to the Constitution—and reality—to certify the results of the 2020 election. This time, Trump’s running mate is committed to spreading the lie that Trump won that vote. For J.D. Vance, it’s not just about loyalty to Trump—it’s about appealing to rank-and-file Republicans, who have now been conditioned to believe that any election that goes to the Democrat was rigged. Two-thirds of party members still think Joe Biden lost four years ago—a proportion that’s actually grown since 2021.
The lesson that Republican officials have learned is that there are tangible benefits to denying election results, and very few consequences. Of the 147 Republicans who voted to overturn the 2020 election, almost all were reelected. One became speaker of the House. In fact, there are more Republican election deniers currently serving in Congress than there were on Jan. 6, 2021.
The Trump era has taught GOP leaders how much they stand to gain from these kinds of lies. To claim they are victims of unfairness allows them to cast themselves as perpetual underdogs. It also builds support for purging people from the voter rolls, foments righteous rage among voters, and chips away at Americans’ faith in public institutions. Republicans have realized that they don’t have to play by the rules, especially when their buddies in the courts are there to back them up.
Their lies also serve the purpose of nurturing misgivings about mainstream journalism, which is undergoing a largely unrelated but no less catastrophic contraction. The news media is hemorrhaging jobs, with no end in sight; most U.S. counties now have little to no local news sources. The information vacuum is being filled with disinformation, conspiracy theories, and straight-up nonsense, which, thanks to the Trump-era line that legitimate news outlets are the “enemy of the people,” has left millions of Americans with no trusted facts-based news source. It has all added up to a self-sustaining cycle of momentum for a movement determined to hang on to minority rule. The more lies Republicans tell, the less their supporters trust fair and accurate news outlets, whose stories diverge from those lies. And the less these supporters consume real news, the easier it is for Republicans to make up whatever stories they please (see: the recent defamation of Haitian immigrants in Ohio) to serve their own political aims.
The rise in shameless lying is far from the only lasting mark the Trump era has left on our elections. Republicans got so close to overthrowing the election last time that they’re determined to see it through on their next go-round. Conservative billionaires have funded a network of groups to the tune of $140 million to contest the election again if Trump doesn’t win. Accepting the results of an election won by a Democrat no longer seems like a must.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court is eager to abet the worst attacks on democracy the right wing can muster. Last week, the justices rubber-stamped a last-minute voter purge of supposed “noncitizens” in Virginia that removed many legally eligible voters from the rolls. The decision will open the door for other states to execute similar purges in future elections, making it easier for conservatives to suppress the vote.
Of course, using legal attacks and physical violence to deny people the right to vote has long been a “normal” part of U.S. politics. There is also a time-honored American tradition of employing conspiracy theories and lies to advance a political agenda. But there has never been an easier time to spread untruths, thanks to willing major media outlets (e.g., Fox News) and ubiquitous social media platforms. And antidemocratic means have never before been used to such antidemocratic ends. In the New York Times last month, two scholars who have written a cumulative five books on “democratic crisis and authoritarianism” issued a warning about America’s heretofore failure to chase Trump out of politics. “We can think of few major national candidates for office in any democracy since World War II who have been this openly authoritarian,” they wrote.
The past four years have shown just how insufficient the so-called guardrails of American democracy are. The things that might have stopped an authoritarian from getting this close to the presidency again—mechanisms of political party control, impeachment, criminal prosecution, a constitutional provision barring insurrectionists from holding public office—were all easily mowed down because Republican electeds and right-wing court appointees like what Trumpism does for them.
Other countries, including Germany and Brazil, have seen corporations and faith leaders successfully unite to urge citizens to reject authoritarian candidates and parties in recent years. The U.S. has seen no such movement to oppose Trump and the GOP. Evangelical leaders are all in for Trump, and many Catholic organizations in the U.S. care more about abortion than any other political issue. At least 276 Fortune 500 companies have donated to members of Congress that voted to decertify the 2020 election results, including dozens that had promised to suspend contributions to those election deniers. One of the richest men in the world, Elon Musk, is stumping with Trump and potentially breaking election laws on his behalf. Another, Jeff Bezos, who owns the Washington Post, directed the paper to scrap its already-written endorsement of Kamala Harris, possibly because his businesses stand to lose billions of dollars’ worth of contracts with the federal government if an angry Trump wins the White House.
Now, the only guardrail left to preserve the still-standing parts of this imperfect democracy are voters, who may cast their ballots against Trump and hope the results are honored. Unfortunately, democracy also carries within it the tools of its own destruction: Voters can easily hand over the country to a party willing to tear it down. And they just might.
There have been so many low points in this election cycle that I can’t even remember them all. Last week, when I reread my essay from one year ago, I saw references to egregious things I’d by now completely forgotten, like Trump suggesting last September that Mark Milley, the nation’s top military general, deserved to be executed. Even the revelation that Trump spoke admiringly of Adolf Hitler on more than one occasion has not weakened support from voters or Republican officials. The past few months—and, honestly, years—have felt like a test that America keeps failing, over and over again.
Whether or not Trump wins this time around, the voting public has now been acclimatized, over the course of nearly a decade, to increasingly extreme pronouncements and policies from the right. The more authoritarian Trump’s plans, the more punitive his promises, the more outlandish his lies, the deeper his supporters dig in. Nearly half the country is on board with his vision for America. There is no real alternative conservative path that could point toward a different future. Why should there be? There is no longer any incentive for Republicans to pave one. Even Liz Cheney—even Dick Cheney!—had to join the Democrats this time around.
After nine years of this, it’s hard to remember that there were days when the biggest differences between presidential candidates were run-of-the-mill policy platforms, when candidates were too scared to openly threaten democratic norms, when being indicted for trying to overthrow an election would not be considered a mark of patriotism, when we could confidently expect the results of an election to stand. Those days are long over. Trump has shown the Republican Party a new way to tighten its hold on power. No matter what happens on Tuesday, there will be no going back.
