Between the blizzard of polls, pundits, and partisanship, most of the attention paid to the 2024 presidential election is understandably based on voters' assessments of the relative merits of Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. And while that process, however tortured it may be, provides a framework for the electorate to scrutinize this election’s diametrically opposed candidacies, to what extent are voters actually thinking beyond November 5 to the future? As we near the merciful conclusion to Election 2024, the results of this single election will signal not just who occupies the White House for four years, but what type of country we are likely to inhabit for a generation.
One truism in politics is that elections are not about the past, but the future. There is no better example than the great statesman Winston Churchill, who was credited with saving Europe, if not the world, from certain tyranny, but rewarded by getting the boot from British voters shortly after the conclusion of World War II. More recently, President George H.W. Bush soared to 90% approval after his swift victory in the 1991 Gulf War but was shown the door by voters just one year later.
If voters were focused on the past, Harris might well be hopelessly behind based on her openly expressed far-left manifesto and dismal performance in 2019, when her presidential campaign ended before it hit the starting gate. And so might Donald Trump after January 6, 2021, and the ugly epilogue to his presidency that had many if not most observers believing his political career was over. But a significant number of voters, provided with a binary choice, are re-examining both candidates four years later, their minds open enough not to rule out either one. Much of the electorate appears prepared to separate Trump from his worst moments and Harris from the current unpopular Biden presidency, accepting the vice president’s message of “a new way forward.”
So much for the past, or even the recent past. Voters are laser-focused on the choice before them today, in the present, with many “double-haters” struggling to pick between two candidates they dislike and/or distrust. They can more easily envision what a second presidency for Donald Trump would look like, for better or worse, since he already occupied the Oval Office for four years. They might have more trouble envisioning a Harris administration, for unlike Trump, she is something of a blank palette, even after declaring that she does not disagree with a single Biden policy and that she was “the last person in the room” when major decisions were at hand.
Voters Must Think Beyond 2024
But what about the future? This election is not like Bill Clinton vs Bush 41 or Bob Dole. It is not like Bush 43 vs Al Gore or John Kerry. Radical change was not on the docket in those elections. The differences between the Republicans and Democrats were relatively small compared to this election. It’s not even 2008 or 2012, when Obama was just introducing progressivism to the country, or 2016, when the novice Trump shocked the world with an upset win but subsequently met with widespread resistance even from his own party. The 2024 election is about defining the country not simply as center-right or center-left as in the past. We are choosing whether we are to be a progressive or America-first nation.
While some might see this as hyperbole, simple math proves the point. If Harris is victorious, winning what some are calling Barack Obama’s fourth term, the country will have elected not just Democrats but progressive Democrats to preside for 16 out of 20 years heading into 2028. Leftism will be the status quo. We will be in the throes of what historians are likely to call America’s second progressive era. But it will be very different and more extended than the first, which commenced at the dawn of the 20th century, driven by President Theodore Roosevelt, who will never be confused with Obama, Harris, or Joe Biden. Republicans will likely respond by moderating their agenda and returning to more conventional politicians than Trump who will only be able to work around the edges of what the far-left has set in stone.
If, on the other hand, Trump pulls off a second win in three tries, he will have presided with his agenda of an opposite type of radical change for eight of the last 12 years when he leaves office. Being far more knowledgeable and prepared than the first time around, he will take his re-election as an affirmation of his plans to drain the Swamp that the establishment has filled with an outsized bureaucracy. The progressive era will be over, and Democrats will have little choice but to head to the center.
Of course, a lot will depend on what happens in Congress. At the extremes, a Republican trifecta – control of the White House, Senate, and House – together with a Supreme Court dominated by conservatives would allow Trump a relatively clear path to achieving everything on his docket: a closed border, the end of sanctuary cities, profound civil service reform, a revival of his drill-baby-drill energy policies, more tax cuts, and many other reforms that will infuriate the left but which they will have little power to stop. This is why, with the GOP likely to seize control of the Senate in this election, Democrats have poured countless time and treasure into capturing control of the House, where they could crush a sizable chunk of the MAGA legislative agenda.
If, on the other hand, Harris and Democrats capture the trifecta, the border will likely remain essentially open as it has for most of the last four years, immigrants will continue to flood the country, the bureaucracy will be expanded, taxes and regulation will increase, the Supreme Court will likely be packed with enough progressives to ensure a leftist majority, and DC and Puerto Rico, both dominated by leftists, could very possibly achieve statehood, making control of the Senate almost impossible for the GOP going forward. If not for Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, Democrats might have already accomplished some if not all of these initiatives during the Biden presidency.
Election 2024: An Existential Choice
Some of either candidate’s agenda will stand the test of time, and some will not. Congressional legislation is not always easy to pass, but it does create durable reform that requires broad consensus to overturn with counter-legislation. In contrast, executive orders by the president can easily be instituted with the stroke of a pen, but that also makes them easy to overturn by the president’s successor. Both Trump and Biden signed dozens of executive orders on the day they took office, most of them reversing the actions of their predecessors.
Unbeknownst to many, a president has remarkably broad power to control who is allowed to enter the country. Presidents have authority under the US Constitution “to suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens” whenever they “find that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.” But that also makes their executive actions temporary, effective only for the four years of their administration. However, tax cuts or increases requiring congressional action, for example, are considerably more difficult to reverse. That is why both parties prefer legislation over executive orders, though they willingly settle for unilateral actions by the chief executive in order to alter the political climate.
Thus, if Harris wins, her likely continuation of Biden’s immigration policies could be reversed by a Republican president. But by 2028, the die will have mostly been cast with millions more having already entered the country. On the other hand, if congressional action leads to an expansion of the Supreme Court or turns territories into states, it would be almost impossible to envision Supreme Court justices being removed, or DC and Puerto Rico being stripped of their statehood when a Republican recaptures the White House. And four years of Trump or Harris appointments to district and appellate judges will have a profound and opposite effect on the federal judiciary.
The bottom line is that, fairly or not, voters in 2024 are facing not just a choice between Trump and Harris, but a decision with existential consequences. How will this election appear in the rearview mirror a decade down the road after the country has experienced the lasting impact of the 47th president? Will our country be seen as progressive or nationalist? Voters would be well advised to think beyond the immediate choice before them to the country in which they hope to live for a generation.
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