There are only 100 days left of the 2024 election, and if past is prologue, anything could happen.
In the last month alone, President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump debated, leading to Biden heeding appeals from members of his own party to step down as their nominee and endorse Vice President Kamala Harris as the next standard-bearer as he recovered from COVID-19. Meanwhile, Trump walked away from an assassination attempt the weekend before the Republican convention, where he announced his own vice presidential pick.
But as Trump, Harris, and their aides prepare for an upended race, it is expected to become a no-holds-barred campaign, complete with more legal challenges.
It is hardly original to describe this election as “chaotic,” but it has been, according to presidential historian David Pietrusza.
Since Biden launched his reelection campaign in April 2023 and Trump did the same the previous November, Trump has been found civilly liable for sexually abusing and defaming author E. Jean Carroll and guilty of 34 criminal counts of falsifying business records in his New York hush money trial, making him the first former president to become a convicted felon and the first to have his mug shot on merchandise. He and other Trump Organization executives were also fined $364 million in their civil fraud case for inflating the value of their assets, pending appeals.
But Trump has had wins in court, with the Supreme Court repealing Colorado‘s decision to strip the former president from its ballot and then providing him with immunity from prosecution over official acts undertaken while in office. The latter ruling has had repercussions for his federal election subversion case, as his federal classified documents matter has been dismissed on the grounds that special counsel Jack Smith was improperly appointed. His Georgia election racketeering trial, too, has been sidetracked by a sex scandal involving Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.
Meanwhile, Biden contended with primary challenges from the likes of Democrat-turned-independent Robert F. Kennedy, Rep. Dean Philips (D-MN), and Marianne Williamson, in addition to an impeachment inquiry of his own over his family’s business interests. Then Biden had to deal with his son Hunter‘s own guilty verdict in his drug-fueled federal gun case before his tax matter goes to trial in September after his plea deal dramatically collapsed under scrutiny from a judge.
“Beyond that, scarily, as Al Jolson used to inform audiences, ‘You ain’t heard nothin’ yet!’” Pietrusza, the historian, told the Washington Examiner. “That may very well be the case today. A ton happened in FDR’s ‘First 100 Days.’ A ton may yet transpire in Biden’s next 100 days.”
This has been the “most unprecedented and volatile political season of my lifetime,” according to Republican strategist Cesar Conda.
“But now that the Democrats have settled on Harris as their nominee, the race will settle into a more conventional rhythm after Labor Day weekend,” Conda told the Washington Examiner.
Those could become famous last words, with Harris and Trump already feuding over the second debate, which Biden and Trump had agreed would be broadcast by ABC on Sept. 10, a week before the former president is due to be sentenced in his New York trial. Trump has started advocating Fox to have the debate instead.
“He is backpedaling,” Harris told reporters this week. “I’m ready and I think the voters deserve to see the split screen that exists in this race on a debate stage.”
Despite Trump telling reporters this week he would debate Harris more than once, campaign communications director Steven Cheung circulated a statement underscoring that “it would be inappropriate to schedule things with Harris because Democrats very well could still change their minds.”
Harris creates “a serious problem” for Republicans because they spent “millions” of dollars “saying how bad it is to have an old president and now their candidate is the old guy in the race running against a younger and quite vibrant woman,” according to Darrell West, Brookings Institution former Governance Studies vice president and director.
“Trump still is figuring out how to attack Harris and don’t have a consistent message the way they did against Biden,” West told the Washington Examiner. “Harris already has risen several percentage points in national polls and the campaign is dead even between her and Trump. Democrats are united and have raised $130 million in just a few days. She is well positioned to do well in the November election.”
Early polls should be regarded carefully because they capture a Harris honeymoon and Trump’s post-assassination increased popularity. But as strategists wait for more information, Trump has been trying out monikers, such as “Lyin’ Kamala” to “Laughin’ Kamala,” for reactions during his most recent rallies in Michigan and North Carolina, calling her ”crazy” and a “radical left lunatic” as he criticizes her immigration and prosecutorial record in an effort to make the election about the border, crime, and the economy. The Trump campaign has expressed confidence concerning its ability to define Harris.
In response, Harris, who is not as well known as Trump or Biden, has been trying to leverage at least that prosecutorial experience by attempting to frame the election, not as a referendum on the Biden administration but as a choice between a prosecutor and a felon, the future and the past, and freedom and chaos.
When asked to predict what the next 100 days could hold, aside from Harris’s own vice presidential selection and the Democratic National Convention, Reagan biographer Craig Shirley speculated that the 2024 election would be about by how “tectonic plates are shifting for the two parties,” arguing, “If the Republicans run an issue campaign, they will clean up.”
“The GOP is becoming more populist, more commonsense conservative, more antiestablishment, more economic conservative,” Shirley told the Washington Examiner. “The Democrats are the elites. They favor the coastal elites, the big cities; the rule of law does not interest them.”
Trump campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt added, “Team Trump has never been more confident that the American people will re-elect President Donald J. Trump on Nov. 5.”
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The Harris campaign will mark 100 days until the election this weekend with a weekend of action, including deploying more than 100,000 volunteers for upward of 2,300 battleground events.
“With a popular message, a strong record, multiple pathways to 270 electoral votes, and unprecedented funding and enthusiasm on her side, the vice president is in a strong position to take on Donald Trump and win in 100 days,” the campaign wrote in a statement.
