Less than six months ago, the oldest sitting president in U.S. history appeared so befuddled during a debate that his barely younger, twice impeached, convicted felon predecessor — a man who stands federally accused of orchestrating a complex criminal scheme to violently cling to power the last time he lost it — seemed poised to reclaim the White House with ease.
Within weeks, things had changed. Former President Trump had survived an assassination attempt at a Pennsylvania rally, President Biden had dropped out of the race, and Democratic party officials had nominated Vice President Kamala Harris to run in Biden’s place as the first woman of color to ever top a major party ticket.
Now, with just days left to go, Trump and Harris are locked in an incredibly close race, with polling showing them within striking distance of each other in seven battleground states.
It has all made for one of the most astonishing presidential election cycles in modern American history, full of unprecedented political moments, bizarre politicking and endless messaging designed to elicit outrage, fear, hope, bigotry and bitter, biting partisanship.
“It’s a wild and crazy ride,” said Jennifer Mercieca, a political historian and communications professor at Texas A&M and author of “Demagogue for President: The Rhetorical Genius of Donald Trump.”
“There’s these outrageous plot points in the story of the election that are absolutely atypical and unusual, and then there is just the every day madness of the moment and how weird things are in this media environment — where nothing makes sense.”
For many Americans, it has been exhausting. A recent survey by the American Psychological Assn. found nearly 70% of Americans identified the presidential race as a significant source of stress.
And no wonder, said Emiliana Simon-Thomas, science director at the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley, where she studies the interpersonal dynamics behind happiness.
The election “is this massive force that is causing uncertainty, that is presenting ambiguity — and that is something that is inherently stressful to the nervous system,” Simon-Thomas said. “Our brains are evolved to try to figure out patterns in the world, the environment we are in, and then predict. And when we don’t have that capacity to predict something, it is innately threatening.”
Making matters worse is that many of us are still “extra-sensitive” to such uncertainty from having just survived a bewildering pandemic, and both Harris and Trump have taken up particularly apocalyptic messaging going into the final stretch of the race.
“Whatever political orientation you have,” Simon-Thomas said, “there is this intensity of messaging and volatility that makes it more stressful.”
John Woolley, a professor emeritus of political science and co-director of the American Presidency Project at UC Santa Barbara, said people’s feelings about this race being particularly jarring are valid. It has indeed been “crazy” from a historical perspective, he said.
Perhaps the wildest thing about it, he said, is that there have been so many “shocking events” that none has held the public focus for more than a couple weeks — leaving voters little time to process them.
Huge moments
Biden’s disastrous debate, Trump nearly being shot dead, Biden dropping out and Harris becoming the Democratic candidate so late in the race would alone have been enough to make this election historic.
Biden’s debate offered a stark window into the fading acuity of a sitting president. The assassination attempt — where the FBI says a bullet nicked Trump’s ear — produced one of the most compelling political images in modern politics, when a bloodied Trump raised his fist defiantly. Harris taking over the Democratic ticket with the backing of party delegates rather than voters drew condemnation from Republicans, while many Democrats cheered it as a chance to put a woman of color in the White House for the first time.
But so much more has happened, as well.
In between Biden’s bad June debate and Trump getting shot in July, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling declaring for the first time that sitting presidents enjoy sweeping immunity from criminal prosecution for actions taken in their official capacity. In August, Robert Kennedy Jr. — scion of one of the nation’s most storied Democratic families — announced he was dropping his long-shot bid for president and endorsing Trump. In September, the U.S. Secret Service said it had stopped a second planned assassination of Trump at one of his Florida golf courses.
In October, Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, refused to admit during a debate with Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, that Trump lost in 2020 — which Walz called a “damning nonanswer.” The next day, a federal judge released a court filing in which Special Counsel Jack Smith provided an extensive accounting of what prosecutors allege was Trump’s criminal scheme to subvert the 2020 election results, including with fake slates of electors and an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
In recent weeks, Harris’ campaign has ramped up efforts to remind voters that several top officials from Trump’s former administration have said he is a danger to the nation and the world. Last month she got a stunning bit of help when John Kelly, the retired Marine general and Trump’s longest-serving chief of staff, warned Trump is a “fascist” who has praised Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
Jennifer Stromer-Galley, a professor in the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University and author of “Presidential Campaigning in the Internet Age,” said such a list of events in one race is astonishing. But she also said that average Americans appear less worried about Trump’s supposed threat to democracy than about grocery prices and affording gas for the car.
And in that respect, she said, Trump’s message may in fact resonate with voters, as fear can drive people toward “that strongman, that strong character, that strong personality.”
In the process of condemning a comedian’s racist joke calling Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage” at a recent Trump rally, Biden in an interview Tuesday appeared to call Trump supporters “garbage” — though he corrected himself, and said it was not what he meant.
That the flubbed, quickly retracted line has been harped on by the Trump campaign for days has struck many political observers and experts as the height of hypocrisy, given that it has been Trump’s own steady stream of aggressive and offensive remarks that has repeatedly raised the temperature of the race and made it feel volatile.
Trump has made almost the same comment as Biden did, but about Harris’ supporters — calling them “garbage” and “scum” — and has called America overall a “dumping ground” and a “garbage can” for the world.
Trump has blasted the nation as a wasteland of crime, promised the largest mass deportation in history, ridiculed transgender people, suggested Harris isn’t really Black, and advanced the dangerously racist idea, used by dictators past, that immigrants bring “bad genes” into the country.
Trump has suggested he would use the U.S. military against average Americans, called his political opponents “enemies from within,” and this week evoked violence against Liz Cheney — a prominent Republican defector to Harris’ campaign — by saying she should be put in front of “nine barrels shooting at her.”
Apart from the threatening, there has been the bizarre.
Odd tangents by Trump, such as about the fictional cannibal Hannibal Lecter or the late golfer Arnold Palmer’s genitalia, have also become routine. Vance has pushed the baseless, racist claim that Haitian immigrants are eating American pets, as well as bigoted, undemocratic ideas about people without children.
Woolley said such tangents are the last thing a traditional campaign wants, but they somehow resonate with Trump’s base and may help “get out the vote of his people,” which is what he wants.
Stromer-Galley said there is no question Trump has been a torrent of unvarnished — and sometimes “gobsmacking” — commentary for years. What makes this race different, she said, is that Harris and her team are giving it back, too.
The Harris campaign has scoffed and eye-rolled when Trump has lashed out, but also ridiculed him as “unhinged” and goaded him into being even less in control. Walz in particular has used the line that Trump is “weird” to great effect, treating Trump’s brashness not with pearl-clutching indignation but cheeky Midwest derision.
At a recent rally in Michigan, former First Lady Michelle Obama said Trump has “no honesty, no decency, no morals,” and too often gets a pass for his outlandish behavior.
“Too many people are willing to write off his childish, mean-spirited antics by saying, ‘Well, Trump’s just being Trump.’”
Trump and his surrogates, including Vance, say Democrats are just too easily offended.
The ‘expectation roller coaster’
According to a recent New York Times/Siena College poll, 78% of Americans said they have a great deal or a fair amount of trust that the results of the vote will be accurate. However, 47% are worried that Trump and his allies will try to overturn the results through illegal means, and 33% are worried Harris will try to do so.
Experts say voting will be safe, and people should trust in the system. They also say that there are ways to process any doubts about the process or anxiety about the outcome.
Such concerns should not be ignored, Simon-Thomas said, but put in the proper context.
An election where doomsday messaging is coming from all directions can feel all consuming, so people should try to consciously “zoom out” and acknowledge that this is an intense moment, but the political volume will soon come down, Simon-Thomas said.
“Zooming out on it can be a calming, restorative process,” she said.
People also should remind themselves that they have “much more in common than they have in disagreement with one another,” and that the world will not end with the outcome of this race, Simon-Thomas said.
“If you’re on the expectation roller coaster — it’s going to be this way or that way, everything is going to burn up or be wonderful — it takes its toll.”
