The long-running 2024 presidential campaign is already shaping up to be one of the strangest in modern history.
There are ten unanswered questions that explain how and why we ended up in this strange world.
1. With six months left in her VP term, Kamala Harris can simply promise solutions to inflation and open borders in 2025. Why can't she implement her proposed solutions to these problems (of her own making) right now?
2. Would the media prefer to help her win and further lose their own credibility by not questioning why she repudiates the leftist policies of the past 30 years, or would they prefer to salvage some of their own reputations and risk her losing?
3. Does the Left appreciate the new campaigning and election procedures now established?
In other words,
Arbitrarily cancelling their de facto candidate when his support is dropping in the polls four months before the election?
Will it nullify a year's worth of primary election results and the will of 14 million voters?
Would they threaten to remove the sitting president from office under the 25th Amendment unless he stepped down as his party's nominee?
Will she nominate a replacement candidate without a primary before the convention and then block rivals from challenging her?
4. Given the precedents of 2020 and 2024, will it become standard practice going forward for Democratic candidates to eschew interviews and impromptu speeches altogether and stick exclusively to TV-prompted speeches and scripted responses?
Is it the fear that a transparent progressive messenger with a clear and honest left-wing message would double down on it, guaranteeing defeat?
5. Will Harris, who will transform like a chameleon over the next 80 days, become the provisional MAGA candidate who will take on former President Donald Trump's positions on everything from border security to tax-free tips? Will the media ask the newly 80-day MAGA Harris why she has abandoned many of the beliefs she once held so strongly?
6. Democratic presidential reelection candidate Joe Biden was declared healthy until June 27, but was suddenly removed from the presidential race after July 21 as he was too frail to continue as the party's candidate. What is his current status exactly?
(He is half conscious and therefore fully capable of carrying out the less important duties of President of the United States, but half incapacitated and therefore entirely unable to carry out the far more important duties of the Democratic candidate.)
7. Would the new anti-Semitic Democrats prefer to risk losing with radical, unknown WASP Tim Walz as their running mate, rather than have a better chance of winning with the popular, successful moderate Jew Josh Shapiro?
8. If one vice presidential candidate went to war to accompany a military contingent and the other wanted to retire to avoid it and lied about retiring, can the media credibly claim that the first's visit was militarily questionable while proclaiming the second's absence heroic?
9. If the current president was so weak and unpopular that he gave up on reelection and is now barely seen or heard from, and the vice president has left Washington to campaign on the president's behalf but avoids all press conferences, interviews and unscripted speeches, then who will be running the United States for the next six months of the lame-duck Biden-Harris administration?
10. If Trump has been likened all summer by his opponents to Hitler and his murderous Third Reich, and a 20-year-old would-be assassin and murderer could easily take sniper position to kill Trump without notifying the Secret Service or other law enforcement, what message would that send to other would-be assassins in the next 80 days of the 2024 election campaign?
If a 20-year-old amateur sniper boldly and conspicuously breached a Secret Service perimeter for nearly an hour, firing eight shots at the president, shooting him in the ear, killing one innocent bystander, and wounding two, is the message being sent that in the future, almost any more experienced, serious sniper could get close enough to President Trump and fire more than eight shots at his head with equal or greater ability than that mentally ill amateur sniper?
And will this insane killer gain eternal fame, applause and immortality in many quarters on the left for shooting Trump?
And if there is such expected reward and perceived opportunity, is it possible that we may also see further attempts on candidate Trump's life?
In short, presidential campaigns traditionally begin after Labor Day, largely following approved protocols, but this twisted 2024 version defies all previous precedent and is not just creepy but dangerous, even before the campaign is supposed to officially begin.
Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow at the Center for American Greatness. He is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and the author of World War II: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won, published by Basic Books. He can be contacted at authorvdh@gmail.com.
The views and opinions expressed in this editorial are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the Daily Caller.