Posted on Monday, December 9, 2024
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by Andrew Shirley
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15 Comments
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The 2024 presidential election was the first in nearly 40 years without a Bush, Biden, or Clinton at the top of a major political party ticket. Five individuals from those three families have been the presidential or vice-presidential nominee for 11 consecutive general election cycles – and it would have been 12 had President Joe Biden not been forced off the ticket earlier this year.
But 2024 did not just break the streak of America’s most notable political families appearing on a presidential ticket. It also showed that their influence over American politics has all but collapsed.
The political establishments in both parties pulled out all the stops this year to sink Donald Trump. Former President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama – the most potent political force Democrats had at their disposal – hit the campaign trail hard for Vice President Kamala Harris. Former President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton joined them, repeating liberal talking points about how a second Trump presidency would mean “the end of democracy.”
In a previously unthinkable spectacle, former Republican Vice President Dick Cheney – whom Democrats have long slandered as a war criminal – joined the Obamas and Clintons in backing Harris over Trump. Liz Cheney, Dick Cheney’s daughter who voted to impeach Trump, joined her father in supporting Harris, despite the fact that Harris has publicly opposed every cause Cheney claims to believe in.
Although George W. Bush declined to endorse either candidate, his silence was taken by many to be a tacit Harris endorsement. It is well-known that there is no love lost between Trump and the Bush family. In 2016, the 43rd president revealed he voted for “none of the above” instead of Trump, and in 2020 he reportedly wrote in Condoleezza Rice, his former Secretary of State.
In prior elections, such a groundswell of support for one candidate from the political establishments in both parties – a phenomenon unprecedented in the modern era – likely would have been insurmountable. But in Trump’s case, it may have actually helped him become president again.
What Americans signaled by handing Trump a decisive victory this year was not just that they were embracing his America First agenda, but that they were rejecting the failures of the political class that has ruled Washington for decades.
The political establishments have only grown more vicious in their rhetoric toward Trump since 2016, with Biden doing everything he could to weaponize the government to impoverish Trump and throw him in jail. Yet the more America’s failed political dynasties railed against Trump, the more voters flocked to him. Trump increased his raw vote total in both 2020 and 2024, and this year he won the popular vote outright – something no Republican presidential candidate has achieved in two decades.
This crushing defeat for not just Democrats but the entire political establishment has called into question the legacies of the former standard-bearers of both parties.
In the case of Barack Obama, his 2008 and 2012 victories resulted from mustering a wide swath of diverse voters into the “Obama coalition.” Pundits predicted this movement would lead the Democrat Party to complete political domination for the foreseeable future.
Yet, as Democrats turned a deaf ear to blue-collar workers, Trump directly appealed to them. His victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016 was a repudiation of Obama’s failures as president and revealed how Obama’s arrogance and abandonment of what were once core Democrat constituencies had opened the door for Republicans to win over these voters.
After Hillary Clinton’s humiliating 2016 loss, she took on a personal mission to destroy Donald Trump at all costs. The book Shattered, an account of her failed campaign, reveals that the very first day after her loss she began laying the groundwork to deflect blame and dispute Trump’s 2016 victory by blaming the media, Bernie Sanders, and above all a “vast Russia conspiracy” for interfering in the election.
Over the last eight years, Clinton has obsessively focused on ensuring Trump would not win a second term. Initially, that effort appeared to bear fruit in 2020 with Biden’s successful bid for the White House. But in 2024 those hopes came crashing down as Trump defeated Harris – hailed by Democrats and the media as the second coming of Barack Obama and the standard-bearer of a “new generation” of leadership.
But it was arguably the Cheney and Bush dynasties and their establishment allies who suffered the most from Trump’s successful comeback bid this year. While the Obamas and Clintons will continue to enjoy a significant level of influence within the Democrat Party, the establishment wing of the GOP now finds itself to be a cause without a constituency, rejected by Democrats and rank-and-file Republicans who have fully embraced President-elect Trump.
Trump’s 2024 victory may well represent the rise of a new political dynasty – one not tethered to a specific individual or family, but to the simple principle that America’s government should serve the people and not itself. That is one dynasty Americans have made clear they will stand behind.
Andrew Shirley is a veteran speechwriter and AMAC Newsline columnist. His commentary can be found on X at @AA_Shirley.
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