I think that Peggy Noonan is underestimating just how different the upcoming election is from those of recent memory in her piece in the Wall Street Journal:
My mind goes to something that I hope doesn’t sound facile because I don’t mean it in a rote, small way. But this country has gotten through a lot. It can take a lot of tension. It was born in it and is used to it. We made it through Shay’s Rebellion and Vietnam, the McCarthy era and the 1960s. We made it through the Civil War, and we will make it through this. We are practiced at withstanding trials. We have a way of forging through. We should take inspiration from this.
Let’s list some of the ways in which this election is different:
- It is the first presidential election conducted with such a high proportion of immigrant population in the country in at least a century and possibly ever.
- It is the first presidential election conducted since Grover Cleveland in 1892 in which a president not re-elected for a second consecutive term is seeking re-election.
- It is the first presidential election to my knowledge in which a sitting vice president has ever neither run on his record as vice president nor distanced himself from the sitting president. Hubert Humphrey’s views on Vietnam were different than LBJ’s. George H. W. Bush ran on his record as did Al Gore.
- It is the first presidential election to take place after a riot at the Capitol.
- It is the first presidential election to take place during two major wars in which the United States is heavily involved.
- It is the first presidential election in which the incumbent was not seeking a second term since LBJ.
and they’re all going on at once. I could go on. This is a very unusual election. There are in effect two incumbents and one of them is straddling running away from her record and running on it while the other is being castigated as an undemocratic, fascist threat to democracy.
This is a presidential election like no other. In some ways it is like the contest between Benjamin Harrison and Grover Cleveland with considerably increased acrimony and precedents of legal challenges and chaos.
I’m pretty shocked at the lack of content I’ve heard from Harris, which I can only conclude is strategic. The closest to this approach I can recall is Bush II had a strategy of agreeing with Gore, trying to reduced their differences on many things (not abortion or a SS lock box of course) to make the election about personality. That wasn’t a persuasive approach for me, but unlike Gore, Trump his historically low favorability ratings (though people who don’t like him do vote for him). Bush II and Gore were also reasonably well known figures, at least partly due to family. Saying little doesn’t guarantee that people will interpret that space positively. I think people inherently distrust politicians and they are more likely to construe the unknown negatively.
I should add the historically low favorability ratings of the candidates to my list of factors that make this election different.
Not enough to suit me.
Some other things to note on this election.
Trump is in the rare person who is on the November ballot for the Presidency for the 3rd time. In American history, there is Jefferson, Jackson, Clay, Cleveland, Bryan, Roosevelt, Nixon.
It is also likely the 2nd last until the center of American politics will shift from the Midwest to the South / interior West. Looking at demographics, after 2030 reapportionment, the Midwest 3 (Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin) and even the Midwest (the 3 plus Ohio, Minnesota, Indiana, Iowa) will be unlikely to be the decisive tipping point in the electoral college.