The presidential election of 2024 is in fact the unfolding of the rolling coup d’état that began in earnest four years ago. To imagine otherwise is to normalize what is patently abnormal and thus to falsify the crisis. It is to comprehend our politics as much of the political media does, clinging to shattered institutional norms, willfully blind to what is obviously the real story, always caught unawares when worse comes to worst. The superficial quadrennial trappings are here, of course, the primaries, the conventions, and the attendant hoopla. These reassuring atmospherics affirm the conventional wisdom of our pundits and pollsters that, despite the high-intensity fervor, this is at bottom a good old contest between rival political parties with different policies, different visions for America, campaigning to win two hundred and seventy electoral votes. In fact, this is no more an ordinary election than the election of 1860 was. Like then, Americans are confronted with a continuing power grab by a boundlessly ambitious and relentless force that repudiates the essentials of democratic politics (even when it avails itself of democratic language) and the rule of law.
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