With Opponents Like These, Who Needs Elections?

REVIEW: '2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America' by Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager, and Isaac Arnsdorf

The latest of the 2024 campaign books, 2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America by journalists Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager, and Isaac Arnsdorf, is light on new details about Joe Biden’s cognitive decline and his administration’s attempts to cover it up. “In any event,” our Andrew Stiles writes, “the book is no less damning an indictment of the Democratic Party compared with Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson's Original Sin or other counterparts in the genre.”

The book "is packed with small moments … that exquisitely capture the essence of the Biden, Harris, and Trump campaigns, and their respective vibes.” Team Biden obsessed over approval from historians and sought advice from Hollywood producers. Team Harris scolded Doug Emhoff for laughing too much and spent weeks debating how to respond to the Free Beacon’s McDonald’s report. Team Trump pelted reporters with snowballs and put their candidate in a campaign-branded garbage truck.

Spoiler alert: The third team won. Now who’s ready for 2028?

Read more from Stiles below:

The most recent book about last year's election—2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America by journalists Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager, and Isaac Arnsdorf—depicts a Veep-like carnival of incompetence starring an erratic and vindictive egomaniac whose worst impulses were enabled by a cadre of fiercely loyal dolts and lackeys who grew increasingly detached from reality, not to mention an entire political party and partisan media apparatus that dared not question the mercurial madman lest they be exiled, humiliated, branded as traitors to the cause.

It also covers the Trump campaign.

2024 is light on juicy new details about the attempted cover-up of Joe Biden's decline. Weirdly enough, the most explosive revelations are about Iran's efforts to murder Donald Trump and his associates. The authors briefly note how U.S. intelligence assessed that Iran had "multiple kill teams" inside the country and was unable to rule out an Iranian role in the assassination attempts in Pennsylvania and Florida. (Don't tell Tucker Carlson.) Several pages later, they devote three sentences to the breaking news that former secretary of state Mike Pompeo "narrowly escaped" after Iranian operatives "tried to capture him" at a Paris hotel in 2022. Um, what?

In any event, the book is no less damning an indictment of the Democratic Party compared with Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson's Original Sin or other counterparts in the genre. It is in many ways more devastating, more grimly amusing, and deeply ironic thanks to the authors' deadpan portrayal of a bumbling president, preposterously running for reelection at age 81, who exhibits every major character flaw Democrats have ever ascribed to Donald Trump. They describe a campaign that deserved to lose—even, or perhaps especially, after Biden's rickety ass was finally booted from the ticket to make way for Kamala Harris.

The entire election can be summed up by how each of the key players chose to cooperate for the book. Trump agreed to be interviewed. Harris declined, obviously. Biden's aides refused on his behalf, citing a conflict with his upcoming memoir. Then one of the authors reached Biden on his cell phone as he was about to board an Amtrak train, and they spoke for several minutes. His aides went ballistic and blocked the reporter's number on Biden's phone, which was subsequently disconnected.

The book is packed with small moments like these that exquisitely capture the essence of the Biden, Harris, and Trump campaigns, and their respective vibes. Biden and his team were determined to run again because they believed he "governed well, and they cared that historians agreed, ranking Biden among the most successful modern presidents." They found a token minority, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, to serve as campaign manager, but gave her essentially no power. Biden got expert advice from Hollywood producers who proposed "an aggressive media campaign to restore voters' confidence," but no one had a clue what he should say.

After Trump was almost killed, and the entire world saw him bloodied and triumphant, looking more badass than any politician has ever looked, Biden's cadre of "uniformly subservient" advisers thought Biden would benefit because it presented an opportunity to "appear presidential" by "speaking loftily about the values and virtues of American democracy." Alas, no one cared. Even after dropping out, Biden continued to insist he was a "political asset" and "complained that Harris's campaign wasn't deploying him enough." Biden's right-hand man, Tom Donilon, told the authors he still thinks the Democratic freakout after the infamous debate was "an act of insanity."

Harris, meanwhile, is revealed as a breathtakingly inept politician incapable of taking action in a timely manner. The new campaign obsessed over the most irrelevant details. Her philandering husband, Doug Emhoff, received multiple scoldings during the convention for laughing too much and, alternatively, for not smiling enough. They "spent weeks agonizing" over just about every decision, including how to respond to a Washington Free Beacon report casting doubt on her alleged employment at McDonald's, which remains very much in doubt to this day.

READ MORE: With Opponents Like These, Who Needs Elections?