In the days leading up to Tuesday, election anxiety and exhaustion across the country has been at an all-time high — and rightfully so, considering the absolute mayhem that has happened just in the past few months. Here’s a recap:
In May, former President Donald Trump was convicted of 34 felony counts in his New York hush money trial, making him the first former president to ever be convicted of a crime.
Then, in late June, President Joe Biden had a disastrous debate against Trump that led to a raft of panicked Democratic lawmakers urging him to leave the race. Biden fiercely resisted that pressure for weeks but he eventually stepped aside and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president. Democrats quickly coalesced around the vice president, and the enthusiasm for Harris was palpable; her shortened campaign consistently set record fundraising numbers.
In between Trump’s New York conviction and Biden’s decision to leave the race, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that some of Trump’s actions as president are immune from criminal prosecution, a decision that has delayed his New York sentencing and that will potentially affect his other criminal cases as well.
In between Trump’s New York conviction and Biden’s decision to leave the race, the Supreme Court ruled that some of Trump’s actions as president are immune from criminal prosecution.
On July 13, Trump was the target of an assassination attempt at his campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, and the images of a defiant Trump, his fist raised in the air as Secret Service agents dragged him off the podium, were plastered all over the news.
That was just the summer. Since then, Americans have been bombarded with dark warnings from Trump about the infiltration of violent migrants (research shows that immigrants commit far fewer crimes than U.S.-born Americans), his blatantly racist and baseless claims about immigrants taking jobs and eating people’s pets, and his threats to punish his political rivals, public officials who oppose him, and journalists.
Trump was also the target of a second alleged assassination attempt in late September, near his golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida.
Harris, on the other hand, has painted Trump as a threat to democracy, and Democrats have campaigned on the further erosion of women’s rights should Trump win.
Election Day may not even be the end of this ordeal, especially if results in the swing states are as razor-thin as the polls have suggested they will be.