A Shortcut Through the Long Campaign

We don’t have to get too wrapped up in the parties’ narratives at this point.

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Former President Donald Trump attends a Super Tuesday watch party at Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida, on March 5, 2024. (Photo by Chandan Khanna/AFP/Getty Images)

Two hundred and forty-one days is a long time to do anything. Even something you like. 

We will start and finish an entire Major League Baseball season in less time than it takes to contest the 2024 general election campaign for president, and we have to do it with just two terrible teams. 

More than 2 million new Americans—a number larger than the population of New Mexico—will be born in the time that it takes to get from Super Tuesday and Election Day, November 5. 

That is a very long time for the ordinary living of life, but for the churn-and-burn cycle of politics in the nanosecond news cycle, it is an eternity. 

I don’t write that just to depress you, though I understand that it would. I point out the extraordinarily long campaign for the general election as a caution. 

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  1. Dancrist13

    I'm becoming a broken record on this in the comments sections, but writing in a name is not the same thing as voting for that person.

    In most states, only votes for registered write-in candidates count. Anything else counts the same as leaving the spot blank. That's why I, personally, look through the list of registered write-in candidates to try to find the least crazy one to vote for. I like for my small fraction of a percent of the vote to show up as being for neither of those major candidates.

    From Ballotpedia.org's review of the laws in 2020:
    "Eight states did not have any requirements and would allow voters to write in any name as a write-in vote.[3] Those states were Alabama, Delaware, Iowa, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oregon, Vermont, and Wyoming."
    "Nine states (Arkansas, Hawaii, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Carolina and South Dakota), did not allow write-in votes."

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  2. LucyTrice

    Thank you for "political predestination." I now have a phrase for what I have been thinking.

    I posted the following comments under "The American People Should Demand Better" :

    I very much appreciated this editorial and I strongly disagree with Nick Catoggio’s (sp?) response. Chris Stirewalt very much expressed my concerns: “I point out the extraordinarily long campaign for the general election as a caution. First, let it be a caution against political predestination.”
    We need that caution, desparately. The strength of the current is no reason to stop fighting and let it carry one out to sea. How many people didn’t bother to vote for Nikki Haley because of that sense of political predestination regarding the other?
    It is incredibly important to hold that space open. The logical and psychological space occupied by the difference between “the presumptive nominee” and “the nominee,” ditching “presumptive” in the interest of brevity, is far from trivial. Words matter, particularly when they disappear.
    That space is important for those who are not binary thinkers, whose gut-level reaction to perceived coersion is to pick the other side or withdraw. It provides some mental relief against the pressure of impatient reductionist thinking.
    I don’t need anyone’s endorsement to decide how to vote. (Maybe I do value the tribal aspect of hearing there are folks who think like me – there aren’t many around). If someone is unable to discern The Dispatch’s moral compass from that editorial, well, I don’t know what to say. Their tribe wants to check something off the list and that incomplete task nags, I guess.
    So, thank you. Stay strong.

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    Larry.Jones

    Chris, Always time well-spent reading your columns. Thanks.

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    Joe Lancaster

    “But there’s also nothing wrong with voting your conscience. Anybody who tells you that you owe them their vote not only misunderstands the relationship, but is a pretty lousy politician.” Chris, does this mean you can get Nick to stop telling me I HAVE to vote for Biden?

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  5. Crs24

    The pre-election is one thing to endure, but I'm worried about what happens when Biden wins. 4 more years of Trump and MAGA lies and whining? Please no!

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    David M

    Thanks Chris!

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    Pmgetson

    We have 8 months until the election in Nov and given how close it maybe and how difficult it has been to count the votes , it maybe December until we have a clear winner. It dawned on me that our political system has implanted two people into it and 9 months later one will emerge as a winner. Rosemary’s baby might be an apt movie analogy.

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  8. Karl C

    Mr. Stirewalt,

    Why is the presidential election campaign season so long? I don't know if kick off is when the first candidate declares (Trump in November 2022?) but it's pretty exhausting.

    Sure, I'm bombarded with "information" every minute of the day that try to sway my vote but I live in a state that has yet to have a primary, which no longer matters because the primaries are effectively over. Biden is old & senile, Trump is old & crazy. I'm not sure there'd be more information (even of the "live boy, dead girl" variety) that would change my prior.

    I believe the primaries only became important with the 1972 cycle but couldn't they have the state primaries range from May to July, and the conventions in September? With how the debates went the last four years, I think thankfully they'll be eliminated, but I think my proposal would cut back on the noise (I would classify the debates as "noise"). Or is there the "election industrial complex" (including the party folks in IA & NH) that makes my info flow a living hell?

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  9. BadgerBill

    “Dina’s on the board of Exxon.”

    Not a Pennsylvania resident, but, wow, just wow. As close to Marie Antoinette’s apocryphal “let them eat cake” as is possible.

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  10. Esther G

    When I read the question about possible future Presidential candidates, my thought was “I hope we still elect our leaders in the future.” The advancement of foreign and domestic A.I.-generated propaganda over time worries me immensely.

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