Presidential Election 2024 Collection

"The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."
-- Milan Kundera 

For decades to come, both contemporaries and historians alike will agree that the Presidential Election of 2024 was like none other in over 230 years of electing a president of the United States.  If there was ever to be books written or movies made about a time in American history I would suggest that you future authors and screen writers get this collection and take notes, because you're head is going to spin.

In the previous election, the United States and the world were in the grips of a deadly pandemic known as COVID-19.  Everything seemed to stop as goods around the world from lumber to build with and semiconductors that were used to power everything from your vehicle to your smart phone were scarce.  In 2020 there was no cure or treatment before the election other than masking up and practicing social distancing.  People, who were lucky to keep their jobs could work remotely from home, and children would not return to school until 2021.  Aside from the deaths, the shortages, and just the absolute uncertainty in 2020; the real tragedy was to our nation's children.  They were robbed of leads in the school play, going to the prom, and walking across the stage to accept their high school diploma or their college degree.  That is what made the high school graduating classes of 2020 and 2021 so important in 2024 and going into 2025; to walk across a stage to accept their college degrees.

So with the pandemic raging, unemployment going up, and the stock market dropping; the American people, 81 million to 74 million voted out the incumbent president; Donald Trump and his vice president; Mike Pence and took a chance on Former Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Kamala Harris.

As Inauguration Day 2021 approached, President Trump was still determined to prove that the 2020 Election was stolen from him, and he called for his supporters in a Tweet to come to Washington, DC on January 6, 2021 for a big rally and that it was going to be wild.  At this Stop the Steal Rally the outgoing President reminded those in attendance to fight like hell or they wouldn't have a country anymore.  Then, as President Trump stated to march down to the Capitol, MAGA supporters stormed the US Capitol with the intent to take back what was "rightfully theirs", the presidency for Donald Trump.

In the end, certification of the Electoral Votes was completed and Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were inaugurated two weeks later.  Feeling smarted from the defeat that he still felt was stolen from him, Donald Trump left Washington, DC not attending the Inauguration; the first time a defeated sitting president of the United Stares refused to attend his successor's Inauguration since John Adams in 1801.  But, before boarding Air Force One for the flight to Florida, Donald Trump addressed his supporters at Joint Base Andrews where he said that he would be back in some form.  The 2024 Presidential Election started as Joe Biden assumed office. 

As the Biden/Harris administration started it was faced with the huge challenge of stopping COVID-19 from running American lives and to fix the economic hardships like high inflation that were to follow.   The day that they were inaugurated the Stock Market closed at 30,930.52 which had increased to 43,940.62 exactly four years later.  When Biden and Harris assumed office in 2021 the December 2020 Jobs Report was 6.5% unemployment where four years later the December 2024 Jobs Report showed that unemployment had dropped to 4.1%.

With the Help of a Democratic House; led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a Democratic Senate; led by Senator Chuck Schumer with Kamala Harris as the President of the Senate, ambitious laws were voted on and passed in those first two years.

In 2020, 96% of the entire Congress; which was split by the Democrats being the majority in the House of Representatives and the Republicans being the majority in the Senate, passed the CARES Act.  This was the first bill that tackled COVID-19 and it provided for such things like a one time $1,200.00 stimulus check for Americans and $600 a week unemployment.  As well as an additional $800 broken up to where the American people received a $200.00 check and then a $600.00 check, but, those were given reluctantly as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was opposed to the additional $800.00.  Donald Trump signed the bill into law, but some stimulus checks were delayed if the recipient didn't have direct deposit through their bank.  The reason?  President Trump wanted his signature boldly placed on the memo line of the check, because in an Election Year it seemed like great politics to remind voters who the president was when you received that $1,200 check.

By March 2021, there were vaccines being distributed to the American people thanks to the Trump/Pence administration's Operation Warp Speed; Joe Biden, in December 2020 as he received the first dose of the COVID vaccine praised Trump's Operation Warp Speed, was nearing 500,000 deaths in the United States and local municipalities were faced with not being able to afford to pay for services that every community depends on.  The American Rescue Plan was passed by 100% Democratic support in the House of Representatives and 100% percent Democratic support in the Senate.  Not one Republican member of either chamber voted yes.  And because the Senate was 50/50; Kamala Harris, in her role as the President of the Senate cast the tie breaking vote for passage.

What the American Rescue Plan; the first bill Joe Biden signed as President in March 2021, did was made sure that teachers, firefighters, and police officers in our local towns received pay owed to them.  This plan saved the pensions of union workers who worked their whole lives and now, because of COVID were at risk of losing those pensions.  This plan made COVID vaccines free of charge to ALL Americans and extended open enrollment into the Affordable Care Act's Marketplace.  But the one thing that really benefited quite a bit was that parents starting in July 2021 would receive monthly Child Tax Credit checks.  These check, for the six months that they were in effect until EVERY Republican member of Congress and two Democratic senators; Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona said no to extending them.  While those monthly tax credit checks were coming in, they helped to lift 40% of America's children out of poverty.

The next big piece of legislation passed in 2021, but this time in a bipartisan way because the Democrats in Congress called out the Republicans' bluff on their decades long speak of supporting the veterans by shaming them into passing the PACT Act.  This one was personal to President Biden because he lost his eldest son; Joseph R. (Beau) Biden, III to glioblastoma multiforme (brain cancer) in 2015 due to a year long exposure to burn pits while stationed in Iraq.  While the younger Biden was most fortunate than others as he was the son of the then Vice President; the President was determined that our veterans and the families of veterans not coming home were properly taken care of.  This legislation would cover veterans and their families with the care and needs owed to them going back to the Korean War from the 1950s.

Then there was the bipartisan Infrastructure Law.  This was a once in a generation investment that would not since Dwight Eisenhower's presidency when infrastructure was first invested in that we would see the modernization of bridges and roads throughout the country.  We also saw through this bill retro fitting of pipes replacing lead ones in our homes.  And not since the TVA under Franklin D. Roosevelt 90 years ago, President Biden, Vice President Harris, Secretary (Tom) Vilsack, and Congress were able to see a dream of Secretary Vilsack's since he serve in Barack Obama's administration, the expansion of broadband Internet into our rural communities.  Biden and Vilsack, like Roosevelt and Wallace before them who recognized the need for affordable and cheap electricity to go into our rural communities in the 1930s to meet basic living knew that in the 2020s after COVID proved the need; Broadband Internet service in our rural communities was now a necessity for school and work.

Then there was the CHIPS and Science Act, which passed bipartisanly.  During COVID, China, whom the United States relies on heavily to produce and ship semiconductor batteries for everything from our smartphones to our cars was shut down.  Our supply chains were disrupted thus delaying Americans from getting the cars they bought, particularly the electric vehicles, or other products requiring those little chips.

Determined to not get caught with our pants down again, and having to rely on China for these chips, President Biden signed this bill into law so that factories could be built; mostly in red states vs blue states.  And what was great about these jobs, much like jobs created by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law it created solid middle class jobs earning $100,000.00 a year without a college degree.

In the latter part of the 117th Congress there was another piece of legislation passed that was called the Inflation Reduction Act.  After suffering from high inflation, (9.1% in April 2022) due to the supply chain issues caused by the world shutting down due to COVID in 2020 and 2021 as well as Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine Congress, again with 100% of the Democrats and zero percent of the Republicans  in the House of Representatives and 100% of the Democrats and zero percent of the Republicans in the Senate; with again, Vice President Kamala Harris in her capacity as President of the Senate cast the tie breaking vote to pass the Inflation Reduction Act.

What this bill did was it had the greatest investment in the environment in world history to combat global warming; which had been on the rise.  In addition, the IRA lowered the cost of insulin to $35.00 a month for Americans on Medicare as well as capping the cost of prescription drugs for Medicare recipients to $2000.00 a year starting in 2025.  The IRA also made it possible for Medicare like the Veterans Administration to negotiate the cost of prescription drugs thus saving the American tax payer $160 billion over the next ten years.

This was the compromise to President Biden's original Build Back Better agenda that the President wanted these things for EVERY American along with affordable child care and universal two year college for free.  But, Senator Manchin would not support that bill unless it was scaled back to what would pass.

By the end of 2021 and going into 2022, things were starting to turn around since COVID ravaged the world nearly two years earlier.  Unemployment was dropping consecutively and would continue through December 2024 causing our GDP by 2024 to be the envy of the world.  Supply chains were starting to get back to normal with well over 90 percent of shelves being stocked for the holiday season.  COVID was not dominating our lives as more and more Americans were receiving the vaccines.  

For the first seven months of his presidency, Joe Biden enjoyed midrange popularity.  He was signing legislation that affected average Americans.  But, then came that withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021.

in February 2020, then President Donald Trump reached an agreement with the Taliban leaving the Afghani government out of what is known as the Doha Accord, otherwise known as the United States - Taliban Deal.   What was to happen was the United States would dramatically draw down forces from 13,000 to 8,600 in Afghanistan within 135 days and then a full withdrawal by May 2021 which would leave the  Afghan National Defense and Security Forces at a major disadvantage when keeping the Taliban at bay.  This agreement was welcomed by Pakistan, China, Russia, and India.  Because of this sense of abandonment felt between the ANDSF and the people of Afghanistan; this would lead to a Taliban takeover of Kabul on August 15, 2021.  

But, we were faced with high inflation where it reached its peak by April 2022 at 9.1%.  There were a few factors to this.  One, we were still recovering from supply chain issues due to lack of goods that the United States and the rest of the world depended on causing worldwide inflation that was not exclusive to the United States.  Two, because of 40 years of not having antitrust laws in place since 1983 there really was no serious competition to lower costs.  CEOs of big box grocery and retail stores were crushing small business since the 1980s out of existence to where Small Town America, USA that once had mom and pop grocery and retail stores, restaurants, banks, hotels, and gas stations before the antitrust laws were lifted used to line the main drag of that town.  Now, there was no competition and big box chains moved in changing the charm and landscape of that town.  And the third was Vladimir Putin invading Ukraine causing worldwide gasoline and wheat shortages.

Race relations was a big thing on Joe Biden's mind.  During the Presidential Election of 2020 he kept talking about the soul of America and wanting to build an administration that looked like America.  When you served eight years as the first African-American president's vice president; how could he not?  It started first when he named his former rival for the Democratic Presidential Nomination; Senator Kamala Harris of California to be his running mate.  

As the transition started between the election on November 3, 2020 and the insurrection on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021; President-Elect Biden was putting together an administration that looked like America.  Pete Buttigieg; an openly gay man as secretary of transportation, Deb Holaand as the first indigenous American to head up the Department of Interior, Lloyd Austin would be the first African-American to be in charge of the Defense Department.  There were Hispanic-Americans at Education and Homeland Security.  He even put some older white men like Merrick Garland at the Justice Department and Tom Vilsack; who served eight years in the Obama/BIden administration as secretary of agriculture came back to serve in that capacity again in the Biden/Harris administration.

But for all of the talk about the judges Donald Trump appointed in his administration, Joe Biden held to his March 15, 2020 promise to name an African-American woman to the United States Supreme Court.  And he did just that with Ketanji Brown Jackson in 2022.  In addition, given his history as a public defender the President would appoint more public defenders to the federal bench than all of his predecessors before him.  He wanted the law to work more for average Americans than for big business.

2023 seemed to be the Year of the Striking Worker and none was more noticed than the UAW striking against the Big Three.

Back in 2008 when the country suffered a serious financial crisis; the worst since the Republican Depression of 1929, UAW members made concessions in order to keep their jobs.  But in the 15 years since the executives were more interested in currying favor with their stock holders and the executives; stiffing on their promises to their union workers back in 2008.

Joe Biden made history by being the first sitting American President to walk a union picket line with striking union members.  Donald Trump went the next day to Drake Enterprises, an auto parts facility in Clinton Township, Michigan.  The Trump Campaign will trying to pass the event off as supporting the union.  But, it was later revealed that the Trump Campaign paid $20,000.00 to a nonunion facility to pass it off as a Union shop.  Two audience members; one holding a "union members for Trump" sign and another holding up a sign, "auto workers for Trump" both admitted that they were not union members.  Aaron Pelo; Michigan AFL-CIO Communications Director said that "Scabbing has never looked so desperate."

In October 2023 during high holy days in the Jewish faith, Israel was attacked by the Palestinian government; Hamas.  This was the worst domestic attack on Israeli soil, to which President Biden pleaded with Israel to learn from the United States' lesson from September 11, 2001 and take a few days for cooler heads to prevail.  

For the next several months, as the Presidential Election was underway during Primary Season many students on American colleges and universities were protesting the Biden administration's offering of assistance and aid that looked like American weapons to Israel.  There was even a movement in Michigan by traditional Democrats to have a vote of non committed.  People may have seen reminiscences of Kent State in 1970 and maybe that was what some protesters were thinking of, but it later came out that many who sparked those protests were professional agitators.  

As the 2024 Election was starting there was that question of age.  The legacy media like CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC spent the better part of always bringing up Joe Biden's age.  The only one who came close to questioning Donald Trump's age was his biggest opponent in the Republican Primary; Former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley.

In the spring of 2024, President Biden challenged Former President Trump to a debate.  While he had the substance of facts on his side, where Donald Trump had the optics of theater on his side, the debate backfired.  Because of a cold and his extensive travel around the world; President Biden appeared too old and too tired for the job.  Within seconds of the debate ending, pundits of all political persuasions were calling for the President to drop out of the race.  

But, Donald Trump was not without his troubles.  In addition to inciting an insurrection on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 the former president was facing state charges; first in New York in a hush money trial where during the Presidential Election of 2016 he allegedly paid hush money to Stephanie Clifford, aka Stormy Daniels to keep quiet about an affair that Trump had with the porn star after Melania Trump had given birth to Baron Trump.

There was also the state charges in Georgia where President Trump had called the Secretary of State to find him 11,780 more votes, one more that was needed to win Georgia in the Presidential Election of 2020.  

But the one that was worse than those two was the federal charge that as Donald Trump was leaving the White House in 2021 he allegedly had classified documents moved down to Mar a Lago.

The idea that this happened is not uncommon.  When a president, vice president, or members of an outgoing administration have their staffs packing up the belongings things can get overwhelming.  This happened with Vice President Joe Biden in 2017 and Vice President Mike Pence.  Once this was discovered by the National Archives they contact the former president, vice president, whoever and the documents are returned without issue.

The same was true for Former President Trump and he was afforded every legal opportunity to return the classified documents.  So, on August 8, 2022, just after 10:30AM, the FBI, who had been in coordination with the United States Secret Service so that the Former President would not be on the Mar a Lago property, walked up in plain clothes to claim the classified documents that the National Archives requested but that the Former President refused to return voluntarily.

The other issue that Donald Trump was facing was a sexual assault crime where E. Jean Carroll was accusing Donald Trump had sexual assaulted her back in 1992.  A jury of his peers found the Former President guilty civilly and the judge declared Donald Trump an adjudicated rapist.   

Throughout the early days of the campaign, Donald Trump was forced to sit in a Manhattan courtroom listening to testimony in the Stormy Daniels Hush Money Trial.  Judge Juan Merchan had to impose a gag order on the Former President.

On May 31, 2024, Donald Trump became the first Former President of the United States to be convicted of 34 felony counts by a jury of his peers.

Just two days before the Republican National Convention, Donald Trump was holding a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.  As he was speaking about illegal immigration and using a chart he had as a visual aid, shots rang out from a rooftop into the crowd.  Twenty year old registered Republican Thomas Matthew Crooks shot eight rounds from an AR-15 style gun into the crowd.  It was initially thought that Trump was shot in the ear, but when looking at photos after the shooting and Trump's fist pumping signal of "fight, fight, fight" as Secret Service whisked him to the car he was most likely hit by a piece of shrapnel of the glass from the teleprompter he was reading off of.  Of the killed, besides Crooks by the Secret Service was Corey Comperatore, age 50 of Sarver, Pennsylvania.  Comperatore was a project and tooling engineer as well as a former chief for the Buffalo Township Fire Department.  It was reported that Comperatore was killed by Crooks' gunfire while shielding his wife and two daughters.

During the week of the Republican National Convention President Biden had contracted COVID for a second time while in Nevada.  By July 21, 2024 the President had made it public that he was dropping out of the campaign and supporting his Vice President; Kamala Harris to take his place.  What seemed like resentment within the Democratic Party was short lived as Vice President Harris was fully accepted by the time of the convention.

The fall campaign was one like never seen before.  Where Kamala Harris was running on ideas like tax credits to buy a first home or start a small business, expanding Medicare to cover home health care, and crack down on greed that was causing the price of eggs and other groceries to go up Donald Trump ran on Haitians eating cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio, children going to school one gender only to come home another gender, and that everything wrong with the country was the massive invasion of illegal immigrants crossing the southern border.  There was even a bipartisan immigration bill in the spring ready to pass both houses of Congress and that Joe Biden would sign into law, but Donald Trump had the bill killed to run on the problem.

The face of this issue was 22 year old Laken Riley, a nursing student at Augusta University.  She was jogging at the University of Georgia when 26 year old Jose Antonio Ibarra, a Venezuelan immigrant who had entered the United States illegally had killed Riley by blunt force trauma.  Ibarra was found guilty on ten counts in the kidnapping, rape, and murder of Laken Riley.

Trump would use this as an example for closing the borders, but what the Democrats and the media failed to mention is that it was because of Donald Trump that Jose Ibarra was in the United States.  On Donald Trump's last full day in office; January 19, 2021 he granted Venezuelans temporary legal status for 18 months through the Deferred Enforced Departure program.  This is similar to the Temporary Protected Status program, but unlike the latter, the DED program is granted by the President and not homeland security for TPS.  And once the 18 months was up, Venezuelan immigrants were not automatically deported but moved to the back of the line.

So, on Election Night, Donald Trump became the second former president of the United States to be elected to a second non consecutive term.  Donald Trump and JD Vance received 312 Electoral Votes and 77,302,580 Popular Votes which was 49.8 percent of the vote to Kamala Harris and Tim Walz receiving 226 Electoral Votes and 75,017,613 Popular Votes which was 48.3 percent of the vote.  This was a 1.5% Popular Vote Victory.

Interestingly, in 2020, Donald Trump as the defeated incumbent president received 46.8% of the Popular Vote to Joe Biden's 51.3% of the Popular Vote.  And in 2016, Donald Trump would earn 46.1%of the Popular Vote to Hillary Clinton's 48.2% of the Popular Vote; or coming up short by 2.1 percent of the Popular Vote in 2016.  Interestingly, Donald Trump ran for president as the Republican Nominee three times, winning twice against Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris, but never received a majority of the Popular Vote in any of the three Elections.

Just ten days before the Inauguration, Judge Juan Merchan handed down the sentence to President-Elect Trump in the Hush Money verdict where 34 felony counts were handed down by a New York City jury of his peers back in May 2024.  The sentence handed down to the President-Elect was unconditional discharge.  What this means is that Donald Trump will still be known as a convicted felon on his record, but there will be no penalties levied against him for those crimes.

See also:

• Presidential Election 1940
• Presidential Election 1944
• Presidential Election 1948
• Presidential Election 1952
• Presidential Election 1956
• Presidential Election 1960
• Presidential Election 1964
• Presidential Election 1968
• Presidential Election 1972
• Presidential Election 1976
• Presidential Election 1980
• Presidential Election 1984
• Presidential Election 1988
• Presidential Election 1992
• Presidential Election 1996
• Presidential Election 2000
• Presidential Election 2004
• Presidential Election 2008
• Presidential Election 2012
• Presidential Election 2016
• Presidential Election 2020
• Presidential Election 2024