Almost everyone expected the 2024 presidential campaign to be a retread of Joe Biden and Donald Trump’s 2020 showdown. But after Biden stepped aside and Kamala Harris stepped in, this presidential election is suddenly looking like a markedly different election year: 2016.
“Déjà vu all over again,” Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski told NOTUS, summoning Yogi Berra.
“This week I’ve been surrounded by different reporters all beginning their inquiry with, ‘What do you have to say about what Trump just said?’” Murkowski added. “And that’s what 2016 was all about. Every day.”
The 2024 election has a bit of everything that made Trump’s 2016 face-off against Hillary Clinton memorable: a Democratic woman running with significant executive and legislative bona fides; racist birtherism reignited by Trump; exasperated GOP lawmakers insisting they “didn’t hear” the latest unmissable outrageous or offensive comment from the Republican ticket; a missing documents scandal; “nasty” woman attacks; even a Beyoncé album.
What’s old is new — and no one seems happy about it.
“There are certainly echoes because Donald Trump is in the news again, and one thing that Donald Trump definitely doesn’t like is having to deal with a strong woman,” Hillary Clinton’s former campaign spokesperson Christina Reynolds told NOTUS. “And we’ve certainly seen that before.”
Asked if he now saw similarities between 2024 and 2016, Sen. Dick Durbin was emphatic: “Of course!”
Trump, Durbin noted, questioned where Barack Obama was born. “Now he’s questioning whether Kamala Harris is Black,” he said. “He never fails to go to the lowest rung on the campaign ladder.”
Even far-right Republicans recognize the similarities with 2016 — albeit for different reasons.
“It reminds me how horribly biased the media is to the left,” Sen. Ron Johnson told NOTUS. “What kind of questions are you asking Kamala Harris other than: ‘Do you like being put on a pedestal? Do you like being considered the new messiah?’”
While Harris did grab much of the attention in the initial days after the Republican National Convention — with Biden announcing he would not seek a second term and Harris quickly working to lock up the Democratic nomination — Trump (and his running mate, JD Vance) have suddenly begun to dominate the news cycle again with eye-popping attacks on Harris’ racial identity. Trump delighting his most ardent followers, outraging his opponents, and making gettable independents and Republicans uncomfortable is vintage Trump. It is classic 2016.
When Trump went before the National Association of Black Journalists on Wednesday, he rattled off lies and insults, failed to answer questions directly, said Harris “turned Black,” and then cut the hour-long interview off at 34 minutes.
“Today was a lot of 2016 in a few hours,” The New York Times’ veteran Trump reporter Maggie Haberman posted on X Wednesday night, “except Harris didn’t really take the bait. Unclear what happens in the next 97 days.”
For some politicos, this presidential campaign evokes the old Mark Twain adage: History rarely repeats itself, but it often rhymes.
Trump, Democratic Sen. Chris Coons said, “in 2016 was fond of using dog whistles.”
“This time it’s a bullhorn,” he said.
“Are there similarities? Yes,” Coons added. “But in the worst possible way. He is more aggressive, more clear, more offensive and more blunt.”
There are, of course, obvious distinctions between the two election years. Perhaps most importantly, people know what to expect — and hardly anyone would be shocked, like in 2016, if Trump pulled off a victory.
In that sense, voters and the media seem to be treating Trump less as a curiosity and more as a potential reality for America. Reynolds noted that the media appears more prepared to handle Trump’s outrageous comments with direct headlines and persistent questioning. And in that sense, Republicans are bracing themselves for an onslaught of unwanted scrutiny.
Republican Sen. Susan Collins called this election cycle “even worse” for her than 2016.
As a top appropriator, Collins told NOTUS she is eager to discuss next year’s spending plan. But just like in 2016, the media is preoccupied with getting the Trump skeptic’s perspective on the GOP nominee’s rhetoric.
“Nobody asks me issue questions anymore,” Collins said.
This summer, Republicans did have a brief reprieve from unflattering media attention when Biden’s campaign melted down over the course of a month. But since Biden dropped out and Harris effectively became the Democratic nominee, the GOP is back in the all-too-familiar hot seat, stuck answering for Trump’s daily outrages.
Republicans appeared exhausted by the political gymnastics required to wiggle out from Vance’s criticism of “childless cat ladies,” and that was before the NABJ interview.
The dynamic are also similar to 2016 in that Trump is not the incumbent forced to defend his response to the COVID-19 pandemic and a flagging economy. He’s free to claim he’d be the magic bullet to whatever ails America and is hardly tethered to the realities of running on his record.
The Biden vs. Trump election, to some extent, was shaping up to be a contest between the two men’s records. At least, that was the plan Democrats had.
Now Democrats seem to think it’s more effective to let the focus be on the outrageous things Trump says — and to underscore those statements by ridiculing his beliefs and the GOP’s policies as “weird.”
That game plan — ceding media coverage to Trump and letting voters focus on him — is straight out of the 2016 playbook. And the lawmakers who were around eight years ago all seem to get that.
Still, there are some Republicans who insist 2024 is no repeat of 2016, who insist Trump is focused on policy and not personal attacks. Ironically, it’s the lawmakers who know best how Trump runs a campaign.
Sen. Ted Cruz — who came in second place to Trump during the 2016 GOP primary — said the former president is “running the most disciplined and effective campaign he’s run.”
“It’s a stark difference because in 2016,” he said. “Hillary Clinton was not an incumbent — had not and did not have a record from the executive branch. Kamala Harris, her record is an absolute train wreck.”
Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine — the 2016 Democratic vice presidential nominee — had the opposite message. He suggested that Trump is so much more unhinged that the races defy easy comparison.
“He’s much more undisciplined and confused now and that’s going to just manifest itself every day,” Kaine told NOTUS.
For the most part though, lawmakers and observers are noticing eerie echoes from the ghosts of 2016. Murkowski said the resemblance came up organically in conversation with another senator.
Reynolds also acknowledged a sense of time travel — but, decidedly, “not good time travel.”
“Take me back to a vacation or something,” she said.
—
Riley Rogerson is a reporter at NOTUS.