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As the 2024 presidential campaign hurdles to a climactic finish on Nov. 5, the two major candidates made their closing arguments. Vice President Kamala Harris spoke on Tuesday at the Ellipse in Washington, D.C., where she promised to be a unifier, casting Trump as a “petty tyrant” who wanted Americans to be “divided and afraid of each other.”
Trump made his final case in a six-hour long rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday that featured a comedian describing Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage” and mocked Jews, Hispanics, Blacks and Palestinians. The New York Times described it as a “a closing carnival of grievances, misogyny and racism.” Many observers and historians have noted that Trump’s rally evoked memories of a 1939 pro-Nazi rally held at Madison Square Garden that was captured in an Oscar-nominated film, “A Night at the Garden.”
The 2024 presidential race remains razor close. But longtime campaign strategist Stuart Stevens is confident of the outcome.
“I think Harris is going to win easily. I don’t think it’s going to be particularly close,” said Stevens.
“It’s the most stable race I can remember. 47% of the country is either MAGA or open to MAGA and 53% isn’t. So the Harris campaign’s goal, task, challenge has been to get as much of that 53% as they can and get them to vote. So we wake up in a world where our Senator Bernie Sanders and my old friend Liz Cheney are on the same side. That’s not a bad coalition.”
Stevens was a top adviser on five Republican presidential campaigns, including for Mitt Romney, George W. Bush and John McCain, and he has been a consultant on dozens of GOP campaigns for governor, Congress and the U.S. Senate.
Stuart Stevens now contends that the Republican Party has become an authoritarian movement. Vanity Fair recently described him as “the campaign cowboy who famously left the GOP to turn his fire on Trump.” He has written several bestselling books about his political conversion, including his latest, “The Conspiracy to End America: Five Ways My Old Party is Driving Our Democracy To Autocracy.”
Stuart Stevens is now a senior adviser to the Lincoln Project, which is working to defeat Trump in the 2024 election. He grew up in Mississippi but has lived for many years in Stowe.
Stevens pointed out that early voting turnout, especially by women, is breaking records. “What is striking about the early vote is that women are voting at 10% higher than men … (and Harris) is winning women by 14 points … Even I can do that math,” he said.
“When this race is done, it’s going to be seen as the women of America spoke,” Stevens asserted.
What happens to Trump if he loses?
“Trump is never going to concede,” Stevens predicted. “They will attempt to have the House (of Representatives) not certify. I think the period from election night until January 20 is going to be the most dangerous period in America since the Civil War.”
Stevens anticipates that if Trump loses he will quickly declare that he is running for president again. “No question. That’s all he does. It’s his business. He’s not going to go out of business.”
Stevens rues that “Trump didn’t hijack the (Republican) party. He revealed it. And the reason that Trump is popular in the Republican Party is because he’s what Republicans want.” Even if Trump loses, “it’s not going to be the end of Trumpism.”
Stevens said that he is not optimistic about the Republican Party, “but I’m very optimistic about America. I just don’t think that this is what the country is.”
Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont Conversation: Ex-GOP strategist Stuart Stevens on the presidential election.