4 questions we will be asking about the presidential race after it’s over

Every presidential election cycle has its idiosyncrasies, but 2024 has been a particularly insane, completely ridiculous election year — unprecedented and unpredictable.

A candidate survived an assassination attempt by turning his head ever so slightly at a rally and getting shot in the ear. A major party’s presumptive nominee — the incumbent president, no less — was replaced on the ballot. McDonald’s politics, Arnold Palmer’s genitals, eating the cats and dogs, dreams and aspirations and ambitions — it’s been an exciting one.

But on Election Day, there will be four lingering and unanswered questions left to ponder. These are thought exercises as much as questions — messy and nuanced, unable to be resolved with any definitive answer. But they are the kind of “what if” scenarios that will be discussed and debated for years for how they defined one of the weirdest political years in American history.

1. What if Biden hadn’t forced the June debate?

On May 15, without any advanced warning or prior reporting on the possibility, President Joe Biden challenged former President Donald Trump to two debates in a social media video. “Make my day, pal,” said a confident Biden. Within hours, the Commission on Presidential Debates was abandoned. Biden and Trump agreed independently with CNN for a debate on June 28, the earliest general election debate in the modern era.

It would ultimately be a catastrophic mistake for Biden, whose epic failure on the stage led to immediate calls for him to step aside, which he would do a few weeks later. I identified this before the debate as one potential scenario that benefited the Democrats — by moving the debate up so early, they had just enough time to push Biden out in favor of Vice President Kamala Harris.

Could it have been a set-up? And what if one side hadn’t agreed to the plan? What if the first debate had remained on Sept. 16, as originally scheduled? There would have been no gigantic intervening incident allowing the Democratic establishment and media elite to push Biden out of the picture before the convention. Perhaps another event would have been created.

But if a debate debacle had taken place in September, Democrats wouldn’t have had the time to formulate a replacement plan. America would be dealing with a potential next administration with a leader in obvious cognitive decline.

2. What was up with Biden’s signature on his drop-out letter?

Biden sent a public letter to his Democratic colleagues in the House announcing that he was staying in the race on July 8. Just 13 days later, someone posted his letter dropping out of the campaign to his social media accounts. The signatures don’t look the same. Perhaps the public letter was signed via autopen, but the signature on his drop-out letter looks different from all other versions of his actual signature.

You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to look at the letter — which Biden was clearly forced to write and post after being essentially blackmailed by prominent Democrats like Nancy Pelosi — and conclude something is off about the signature. It is underlined, something Biden seemingly never did before. And most peculiar is the last letter, which looks distinctly like an “s,” as if it is being signed “Bidens.”

The mystery of the strange signature illustrates a broader question: Who is actually running America? If Biden was unable to be the nominee, how is he still competent to be the president until January? And the question Harris still can’t seem to find a believable answer to is how she did not see what the whole world saw on that debate stage during her three-plus years as his vice president?

3. What if Harris had Democratic challengers?

As we now know, Harris was able to secure the replacement nomination thanks in part to Biden formally throwing his support behind her shortly after his drop-out letter. But we also know there was no grand plan to replace Biden before he dropped out, or even in the hours and days after.

In fact, longtime journalist Mark Halperin, who broke the news that Biden would exit the race, initially reported that the plan was to have an open convention with Harris as one of a handful of contenders. During a conversation with Tucker Carlson last week, Halperin said that plan may have changed due in part to backlash from Democrats about his reporting.

What if Harris actually had to withstand a real, albeit brief, primary process? Could she have secured a nomination if California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer or Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro had gotten involved? If her historic unpopularity ultimately dooms her on Election Day, the Democrats may regret the immediate swap.

4. Would just a little lawfare have gone a long way?

On the Republican side, Trump has a wide array of vulnerabilities, and they’ve been on display at times throughout this campaign. Harris had him on the ropes during the presidential debate, where he constantly took the bait rather than stick to his points.

But perhaps his biggest vulnerability proved to be largely irrelevant — the multiple legal cases against him. The Harris campaign barely mentions anymore that Trump is a “convicted felon,” as that talking point has seemingly failed to land. Instead of being able to hang Trump’s alleged law-breaking on him — through a precise Jan. 6-related case or a tight classified documents case, or even a Georgia case that had capable litigators — prosecutors are stuck in a legal morass.

The New York business records case was absurd to anyone not strongly partisan against Trump. And as we reach the end of the race, the GOP candidate has been able to avoid any other prosecutions, nullifying the knock against him. If the left had been less heavy-handed with the lawfare, maybe they could have salvaged something of significance legally.

So instead of being able to answer any of these questions, we drift toward Election Day with the race we deserve — a dumpster fire of chaos, the hot mess election.

Steve Krakauer, a NewsNation contributor, is the author of “Uncovered: How the Media Got Cozy with Power, Abandoned Its Principles, and Lost the People” and editor and host of the Fourth Watch newsletter and podcast.