Who’s normal, Trump or Harris?
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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. What do voters want from this election, four years of big changes or four rare years of stability? Which candidate, Kamala Harris or Donald Trump, is likely to fulfill what seems to be the electorate’s longing for a simultaneous mixture of disruption and normalcy? Mr. Trump entered U.S.
politics in 2015 as a hurricane of disruption. In debates and primaries, he rolled over more traditional Republican opponents, insulting them and promising big changes, most memorably that he’d build “a wall" along the southern border. He then beat, barely, his establishment Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton.
His term produced traditional public policy but also constant tumult. Four years later, the electorate’s appetite shifted from disruption to stability. Another agent of disruption emerged but this time from within the Democratic Party.
Democratic socialist Bernie Sanders achieved a surprising early lead in the presidential primaries. Fearing that the degree of progressive change Sen. Sanders was offering would scare too many voters, the party establishment anointed Joe Biden, Barack Obama’s former vice president.
(This election may end the party’s vice-presidential-nominee fixation.) Mr. Biden, a careful-sounding creature of the slow-moving U.S. Senate, ran on returning the country to normalcy.
It’s hard to recall anything of substance he campaigned on other than replacing what came to be known as the Trump chaos. By a slim margin, the Biden normalcy pitch brought him into the presidency. Now with the 2024 election only weeks away, the nation seems to be teetering on a political seesaw over what it wants in the next presidency.
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