“This is not a normal election. Donald Trump is not a normal candidate. He is deeply mentally unstable.” So said Tom Nichols, a writer for The Atlantic magazine, on Sept. 24. The day before, at a rally in the all-important battleground state of Pennsylvania, Trump indeed seemed unhinged when he screeched to the cheering crowd of MAGA minions that “Kamala Harris is a communist.” The former president seems to have dusted off the old “red scare” playbook that disgraced Wisconsin Sen. Joe McCarthy used when he smeared his political opponents as communists in America after World War II.
Indeed, this is not a normal election. Historians a century hence will look back on this year’s contest as a political roller coaster no matter who wins in November. Though Trump has a good chance to be the only former president since Grover Cleveland to win a second non-consecutive term, Kamala Harris is proving to be a powerful opponent against Trump. Since President Biden bowed out after his desultory debate performance earlier this year, Harris has brought “mojo” and momentum into the race for the presidency. Trump seems increasingly rattled by the new life in the Democratic Party. His own dyspeptic and dystopian debate performance against Harris showed millions of viewers that, with the departure of Joe Biden, Trump is the old man in the race now.
Trump knows that if he doesn’t go back to the White House, he could be headed for the “Big House.” An election that he seemed to have in his grasp may now be slipping through his fingers. While Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, are fuming falsehoods accusing Haitian immigrants of eating cats and dogs, Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, are waging a positive, good-humored and well-financed campaign.
This year’s run for the White House may be the most surreal presidential contest in American history. In the last few months, an aged Biden has bowed out of a second run, and there have been two assassination attempts against Trump. Just when things couldn’t get weirder, they did. In the crucial state of North Carolina, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson—the GOP’s candidate for governor of the state—is in political hot water after a CNN report of his comments calling himself “a Black Klansman” and supporting a return of slavery gave pause to voters and fodder to late-night comedians. Robinson has railed against LGBTQ+ Americans in speeches to religious groups, but in private he has also professed a love for transgender pornography.
Trump has been an enthusiastic supporter of Robinson, calling him “Martin Luther King on steroids” and “Martin Luther King times two.” Like Robinson, Trump appeals to right-wing religious fundamentalist voters in spite of his hush money payments to an X-rated movie star. Both candidates could be called “porn-again Christians,” and both seem to believe that the Seventh Commandment says, “Thou shalt not admit adultery.” (Robinson claimed in an online forum to have slept with his wife’s sister.)
Robinson probably will lose his campaign for governor in the Tarheel State, but his loss could also drag Trump down in a state that he desperately needs to win in his quest for the 270 electoral votes required for victory in November.
A century ago, during the presidential election of 1924, Progressive Party candidate Robert La Follette voiced views that would be anathema to today’s Republican office-seekers like Trump, Vance and Robinson. La Follette served as a Republican governor of Wisconsin, then became a senator from the state, which is today one of the big three Rust Belt battleground states in the 2024 election, along with Pennsylvania and Michigan. He broke with the Republican Party and worked for political reforms including environmental conservation, women’s rights, fighting the Ku Klux Klan and opposition to war. Though he never won the presidency, his Progressive Party run in 1924 netted nearly 5 million votes, an impressive showing by a third party—about 17% of the 1924 vote that re-elected Republican President Calvin Coolidge.
Today visitors to the Capitol building pass a marble statue of La Follette, a fitting honor for a candidate whose words still resonate: “America is not made, but is in the making. Mere passive citizenship is not enough.”
Like what you just read? Support Flagpole by making a donation today. Every dollar you give helps fund our ongoing mission to provide Athens with quality, independent journalism.
