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Is it Horror? The 2024 Presidential Election, Part 1
Thoughts on dread
REVISED OPENING
A few hours after I completed this piece, Joe Biden stepped aside as a presidential candidate and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris. Though I’d written everything you see here, I knew that word could come anytime. My original goal in writing this was to capture the insanity of the moment. It’s still an insane moment. I’ve adapted the piece to reflect the current reality.
Part 2 of this installment of Is it Horror? can be found here.
ORIGINAL OPENING
This essay is a snapshot in time. For all I know, it will be irrelevant in 24 hours. This is such a unique moment, a bizarre time for politics, I felt I had to capture it, if only so we can remember the dread we’re feeling as things crumble around us. If you’re reading this in six months, you know how it turned out and where we are. But this piece is not about the future. It’s about now.
It started in June, or earlier. I can’t be sure. There was the debate, then the Stephanopoulos interview, then the Holt interview, then the Morning Joe call, then the Speedy Morman interview, and there we were, at the lowest point of any presidential campaign in my lifetime. This congressman wanted Biden to stay in. This senator wanted him out. Polls…
