Some thoughts on the current state of the 2024 Presidential Race, as told by a jaded GOP operative

HINT: The 2024 presidential election is now a brand-new race, and don’t let anyone tell you anything different.

After studying — and then working — in D.C. politics for nearly 15 years, I used to think I’d seen it all. How I couldn’t have been more wrong…

I made the tough decision a couple of years ago to step back from politics and focus on other work not because I wanted to leave the game, but because the game left me. The GOP under President Donald J. Trump has morphed into something unrecognizable — something I believe will set us back more than it will ultimately advance us — and I wasn’t willing to sacrifice my principles for a cause I didn’t believe in.

That doesn’t mean that I haven’t kept abreast of current events. If anything, what’s happened over the last few weeks has reassured me that my decision was the right one, for now. 

I “grew up” in a world where students learned politics through cutesy videos like “I’m Just a Bill” from Schoolhouse Rock. Where checks and balances, the concept of three EQUAL branches of government, and Tip O’Neill’s famous slogan “All politics are local” loomed large. Heck, I was one of the millions of Americans enthralled with the TV show “The West Wing,” idyllic as it may be, and used to dream that I could be like Josh Lyman or Karl Rove when I finally made it big in the nation’s capital.

(Of course, I later learned that the political show most accurately depicting D.C. politics is “VEEP” — which says a lot about the state of the nation — and HBO launched that show largely pre-Trump!) 

The running joke for Republicans who hone their talents in D.C. is that you come in as a staunch conservative and end up a pragmatic moderate the longer you stay “inside the beltway.” 

Maybe I did live in D.C. for too long, but I very much found myself becoming that dreaded “R.I.N.O.” over time — and truthfully, I’m not ashamed or embarrassed by it. So what if my beliefs resemble those of former House Speakers John Boehner and Paul Ryan — both men I believe did a phenomenal job given the circumstances they were under, and both men who only called it a day when the fringe within our party became too much for them to handle daily.

Again I go back to ideals, but we used to live in a world where Republicans represented all colors and stripes of Americans — a true “big tent” of sorts. You all know I’m a Philly girl at heart, and as such, my first internship back in 2005 was for my then-Senator, the late Arlen Spector. Spector was a longtime liberal Republican who served my home state alongside another Republican, Rick Santorum, who was far more conservative than Specter and whose 2006 senate campaign I also worked on. 

Unfortunately, you wouldn’t find a pairing like this in 2024, because you no longer have “Blue Dog Democrats” and “Northeastern Republicans” roaming the halls of the Capital in tandem. We can talk about Democrats and Republicans creating a “big tent” within their respective parties all we want in politics, but it no longer exists in practice — and that’s a damn shame because the majority of American people are in the middle of the political spectrum and not at the ends of the bell-curve like our elected officials. 

Which brings me back to the events of the last few weeks. I’m not going to recap them because, frankly, there’s enough ink being spilled on them elsewhere.

Rather, I’m gonna start by sharing this tweet, because well, it’s pretty apropos:

They say history repeats itself. While many of the events that we are facing right now are similar to what happened in American politics in 1968, we didn’t have the internet or social media 56 years ago. Party bosses — rather than the grassroots — were very much still in control back then, and we didn’t go out of our way to do or say the most politically correct thing 100% of the time. 

Even in times as crazy as these, you can tell which politicians on both sides of the aisle are harkening for a return to the civility that once existed in Washington. 

Like former Maryland governor (and current U.S. Senate candidate) Larry Hogan:

Or New York Republican Congressman Michael Lawlor:

Both of those posts came Sunday after President Joe Biden announced he would leave the presidential race. 

Several similar posts were released by their Democratic counterparts earlier this month as well in the wake of the attempt on former President Trump.

Unfortunately, civility appears to be the exception these days — and not the rule. You can say all you want about an octogenarian being too old to run for president, but to be fair, the GOP’s nominee is only a few years younger than him. 

We’re no longer able to have a civil discussion on the issues that divide our two parties these days. Rather, the temperature has been raised so much that it’s led to violence and bloodshed at times.

When I’m working with my clients, I like to take a holistic approach and start from the top — the 30,000-foot view of the project, so to speak — before I dig in deep and dive down to the 10,000-foot or 5,000-foot views. Both Republicans and Democrats today are skipping ahead to those myopic views, much to their detriment.

For example, many Republicans today still think the race is Trump’s to lose even with Biden off the ticket — after all, why wouldn’t the American people re-elect a convicted felon to the nation’s highest office in November? It’s why Trump’s campaign is running scared, demanding changes to the ABC presidential debate in September and reimbursements for his previous campaign efforts rather than embracing a full pivot and doing whatever it can to mount a competitive race against Vice President Kamala Harris and her soon-to-be-announced running mate.

You see, two wrongs ≠ a right. And the Democrats just took away one of those “wrongs” the moment Biden announced he was not seeking re-election.

Trump’s “advantage” in the race came from the fact that Americans disliked both original choices for president — in a Trump v. Biden matchup, Trump as the outside is the natural benefactor. Without Biden in the mix, he does not necessarily have that same advantage.

Much can (and will) be said about the timing of Biden’s decision — in particular, the fact that it came after Republicans nominated their ticket in full at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. Again hindsight is always 20/20, but Trump’s decision to select Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance as his running mate looks even worse now than it did last week because he brings nothing new to the ticket and makes it that much harder for Trump to get to 50%+1 on November 5th. He would have been much better selecting a swing state leader (like Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin), a female (former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley), or a minority candidate (Sens. Tim Scott of South Carolina or Marco Rubio of Florida).

Nor am I the only one to think this — just look at the results of Punchbowl News’ A-Canvass of senior congressional staffers and K Street leaders who were following the RNC speakers:

You can take it to the bank that Harris is not going to make this same oversight. Multiple reports have her top choices for a running mate narrowed down to three swing state candidates: Govs. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and Roy Cooper of North Carolina, as well as Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly.

Not only will this cancel out in full any advantage that Vance could have brought to the GOP ticket, but it will make it that much more difficult for Trump to expand beyond his already-maxed-out ceiling.

Kamala and her “Blue Dog” swing-state running mate, on the other hand — well, they may have a clearer pathway to 50%+1 come November 5th.

I guess my point (via this very long ramble) is this: Sunday’s news doesn’t mean that Trump will definitely lose or Harris will definitely win in November. All it means is that the 2024 presidential election is now a brand-new race, and don’t let anyone tell you anything different.