Reflections on the U.S. Presidential Election of 2024

During the 2024 US presidential campaign, I wrote a series of 22 columns for the Tocqueville 21 website chronicling events and providing commentary. In this essay I reflect back both on the columns, and on the election itself. I note that I, like most commentators, by focusing on the “horse race” aspects of the election, failed to anticipate the radical nature of Trump’s second term in office, and offer an explanation for why and how this radical turn took place. I then discuss the larger question of how Trump rose to power. I take into account explanations grounded in structural economic and social factors, but also note that the 2024 election remained very close, and that very contingent factors―especially Joseph Biden’s refusal to drop out early, and the course of the criminal trials against Trump―could in fact have swung the result.