'Squandered': Writer mourns wasted chances he says could have given runaway election win

The 2024 presidential election is, at least according to polls, coming down to a knife's edge — one of the closest races imaginable. But it didn't have to be that way, wrote Perry Bacon Jr. for The Washington Post.

He said either party had opportunities to lock down a win early — and neither one took them.

Operatives on both sides, Bacon wrote, "are already (politely) expressing frustration with their camp’s decisions. Post-election, expect to see very strong criticism of whichever candidate loses."

The GOP's chances to run away with the election were clear, he wrote. First, they could simply not have re-nominated Trump, choosing a candidate with less baggage instead.

Even if they had stuck with Trump, though, he dragged himself down by selecting Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) as his running mate, and had numerous chances to practice message discipline and stick to policy rather than push lies about Haitian migrants eating people's pets and gossip about Arnold Palmer's penis size.

And pro-Trump activists could have refrained from pushing an extreme agenda in Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation's blueprint for a new GOP presidency that has become a massive liability for the Trump campaign.

On the other side, wrote Bacon, Democrats had opportunities to do better as well.

First of all, he argued, President Joe Biden tried to pass too much legislation, too fast,

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He added that Democrats kept him in as their nominee until the summer, in the face of overwhelming poll evidence the broader electorate didn't have confidence in him. Once he was out, he said, they took a gamble on immediately coronating Vice President Kamala Harris the successor — one which he said appears to have worked out — but they now have her spending too much time chasing after Republican voters.

Ultimately, Bacon concluded, those decisions made differently could have had huge consequences.

"Democrats, Biden and Harris have made mistakes; so have Trump and Republicans," he wrote. "That said, it’s not clear that either party can do much to address the deep partisan polarization that has made almost every U.S. presidential election this century very close."