Election 2024: A bizarre historic showdown reaches its final chapter — maybe

At long last, America has arrived at the final chapter of the seemingly endless 2024 presidential campaign, which in some broader historical sense has consumed most of the past decade. How long this final chapter will take, whether it will yield anything like a conclusive verdict on the Trump era and whether it really is the last chapter — or just another twist to the ludicrously convoluted plot — remain to be seen. 

With the first polls closing at 6 p.m. Eastern time, President Donald Trump has won both Kentucky and Indiana, to the surprise of absolutely no one, while Kamala Harris has carried Vermont. We should begin to get a clearer picture of how results are unfolding by 8 p.m. Eastern, at which point polls in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Texas will have closed. Winners may not be declared in any of those states for several hours, but the initial counts will provide some idea of how the night is likely to unfold

To say that this election is extraordinary or anomalous or unprecedented, while clearly true, doesn’t come close to capturing the bizarre alternate-universe quality of this entire episode in our nation’s history. Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are locked in another tight race likely to be decided by a few hundred thousand votes in a handful of now-familiar swing states. That speaks to our country's profound democratic dysfunction, but it isn’t the truly strange part. To begin there already “normalizes” this race by cramming it into a familiar and reassuring political template. 

Even two years ago, it seemed implausible that either of those people would be here. After the chaos of Jan. 6, 2021, the inauguration of Joe Biden and a second impeachment — consider how unlikely that phrase is, all by itself — it was widely assumed that Trump's political career was over and he might be heading for prison, house arrest or (far more likely) a luxurious retirement as a social media avatar based in Dubai or Grand Cayman. Harris was broadly perceived by the Beltway class as a low-impact vice president and perhaps a political liability. We will never know how Harris would have fared in an open Democratic primary campaign, but as the whisper campaign around Biden began to expand, party donors cast loving glances toward California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, among others. The single debate between Biden and Trump in June clearly altered the course of American history — but exactly how, and in which direction, is not yet clear.

Harris and Trump are here now, in any event. Both have tried to sound confident of victory in the last week or so, which is customary at this stage of the game. But one of them has run a ragged, undisciplined and often listless campaign, increasingly focused on blatantly false claims and hateful invective, and without the slightest pretense of “moderation” or unifying rhetoric. Yet if we believe the polls (which we evidently shouldn’t), he’s dead even with the candidate who has run a studied, cautious, relentlessly upbeat but obsessively nonspecific campaign designed to offer nearly all things to nearly all people. One candidate has been convicted of multiple felonies and found liable for sexual assault by a civil jury — and those things are perceived as political advantages against a squeaky-clean former prosecutor whose Black-Indian-Jewish blended family appears to have been carefully cast for a car-insurance commercial.

By some point on Wednesday, or perhaps a day or two after that, we ought to know whether Harris or Trump has won enough electoral votes to become the next president. Eventually — although this might take longer — we will also find out whether their party will control one or both houses of Congress. Of the states that are likely to report results fairly rapidly, Georgia, North Carolina and Michigan will be seen as leading indicators. If Harris wins two of those three, Democrats will begin celebrating, and Trump’s team will begin filing unwinnable lawsuits and staging potentially ugly protests. If Trump wins all three, Democrats will begin to adjust their horizons to Trump 2.0 and MAGA loyalists can begin drafting thousands of termination letters to “deep state” civil servants.

Republicans are clearly favored to win a majority in the U.S. Senate, although upsets in Florida, Texas or Nebraska could change that. Democrats probably have a minor statistical advantage in the House, but it could take at least a week before all those races are decided. Where America is heading after we know who the winners and losers are — and whether we can agree on that question — is anyone’s guess. But the part that’s a lot harder to understand is how we got here. 

While the historical precedents aren’t the real story, they are striking enough. Trump is trying to become the second president in American history to serve non-consecutive terms (joining the illustrious Grover Cleveland). Harris is the first non-incumbent major-party nominee in 56 years to be chosen without running in the primaries. The last such example was Hubert Humphrey in 1968, also a sitting vice president nominated at a Chicago convention after the incumbent was forced from the race. (Democrats hope to avoid any further parallels.) 

Where are we on Election Day 2024? Nobody knows anything, in the famous maxim of Hollywood screenwriter William Goldman. These days there’s no such thing as “insider” knowledge that isn’t immediately dispensed to millions of people on social media and then distorted into false certainty. It’s impossible for anyone to tell which surveys of public opinion are governed by rigorous methodology and which are conjured up by some hyper-partisan mini-Oz, tweeting from the proverbial basement. 

Will a tide of resentful, low-propensity voters, understandably alienated from the undemocratic status quo and eager to punish the so-called elites, deliver a death-blow to democracy? Will American women, united as never before by the overt misogyny and sexism of the MAGA movement and its evangelical allies, create an unexpected blue wave? There are other possibilities, to be sure, including the "anti-anti-Trump" galaxy-brain theory that a Trump win is better for Democrats and the left — because it would supposedly guarantee a major pushback in the 2026 midterms, followed by the first Trump-free presidential election in what seems like a lifetime. Count on just one certainty: This election's results, and its lingering effects, will not quite be like anyone expects.

Democrats have successfully framed this election as a contest between normal and “weird,” to recycle the cringeworthy epithet from the Harris-Walz peak of early September. But have they successfully convinced American voters which of those things they want? Let's find out.