It is a cliché that US presidential elections present momentous choices with long lasting consequences. In reality few live up to that billing. The difference between Dwight Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson in 1952 or between Bob Dole and Bill Clinton in 1996 were about questions of emphasis rather than big paradigm shifts. Even the more ideological contests, notably Lyndon Baines Johnson versus Barry Goldwater in 1964, or Jimmy Carter versus Ronald Reagan in 1980, were within the realm of normal. They offered sharply diverging visions; but in neither of those contests did any candidate question the rules of the game.
The only comparable election to the coming battle between Donald Trump and Joe Biden in 2024 was Trump against Hillary Clinton in 2016. Even then, however, Trump’s first shot at the White House was sufficiently chaotic to be an upset rather than an earthquake. So it is entirely rational to put this year’s election in a category of its own.
For the first time since the eve of the US civil war in 1860, the American system itself is poised to be on the ballot. But first the US Supreme Court is likely to have to make one of its most politically consequential judgments in decades: on whether the 14th Amendment can be used to bar Trump from ballots. Colorado’s supreme court and Maine’s top election official have already said he should be disqualified from standing in state primary ballots on the grounds that he engaged in insurrection against America. Assuming the decision goes in Trump’s favour, the legal wrangling will set the tone for the most contentious election Americans will have witnessed.