2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America (Book)

“2024,” a campaign book by three seasoned political journalists, immerses readers in the chaos and ironies of the race for the White House.2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America, by Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager and Isaac ArnsdorfIn “2024,” the latest 400-page dispatch from last year’s presidential contest, the authors, a trio of veteran journalists from different august papers — Josh Dawsey (The Wall Street Journal), Tyler Pager (The New York Times) and Isaac Arnsdorf (The Washington Post) — write that “there was a view popular among some political insiders that this election had been over before it was started.”The authors end up arguing that things were not so fated, but reading what they have to report, I couldn’t help feeling those political insiders had a point. In this account, Biden’s operation resembles its candidate: listless, semi-coherent, sleepwalking toward calamity. It exists for its own sake, impervious to outside input, pushed along by inertia alone. The Trump campaign — at least after his first indictment provides a burst of energy and purpose — appears driven, disciplined, capable of evaluating trade-offs and making tough decisions. Trump seems to want to win; Biden just wants to survive.Things do change when Kamala Harris enters the fray. She gives Trump a run for his money, but her campaign is held back from the start by the slow-moving disaster that made it necessary in the first place.“2024” is a well-paced, thorough and often (darkly) humorous account of the two-year campaign season that began when Donald Trump announced he was running for president again — at a Mar-a-Lago launch so disorganized and halfhearted, the authors write, that even sycophantic Trump allies admitted it was “a dud.”It is also perhaps the smelliest campaign book I can recall. Trump reflects on his future over fried shrimp and tartar sauce. A Biden aide picks at eggs and bacon in a lonely hotel restaurant. At a desultory Trump news conference in the summer of 2024, packages of sausage and gallons of milk are laid out as props to highlight rising food prices; flies circle the meat “spoiling in the August sun.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More