Even before U.S. President Joe Biden dropped out of the race on Sunday, November’s presidential election had become a dizzying roller-coaster ride.

In the run-up to this election, the Democratic Party failed to consider the impact a weakened Biden would have on the electorate, and it assumed that fear of former president Donald Trump would be enough to win.

In just the past few weeks, however, two new factors emerged, wreaking additional havoc on the foundation of these two assumptions: the horrifying mass shooting at a Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, and the growing chorus of prominent Democrats urging Biden to step down as their party’s presidential nominee.

This is truly, as my brother John would say, “an Armageddon election.”

Even before last week’s Republican National Convention, polls were showing Trump commanding the support of his party’s faithful. In the aftermath of the shooting, the embrace intensified, with some seeing his escape as a sign of divine intervention.

This deification of Trump and the wild enthusiasm seen at the Republican convention made Democrats more concerned about their electoral prospects and more troubled by Biden’s all-too-apparent weaknesses.

His frailty was already an issue, having come into sharp focus during the June 27 debate. With polls showing almost two thirds of Democrats displeased with Biden, senior party elected officials had publicly urged the president to pass the torch to a younger candidate.

Now that Biden has withdrawn his candidacy and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to be his party’s nominee, the election is once again wide open. Harris isn’t the nominee just yet, with various factions in the Democratic Party possibly jockeying for power, but she will be the hot favorite ahead of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago next month.

It is fair to say, then, that the current election cycle has been topsy-turvy, particularly over the past week. And yet it’s worth pointing out that within the larger American political context, it is still business as usual.

For starters, the stakes are still as high as they were since the campaigns kicked off more than a year ago.

This is truly, as my brother John would say, “an Armageddon election.” No matter who emerges as the Democratic nominee, this will be a contest between two fundamentally different visions of America. Despite Trump’s statement that it was time to unify the country, his convention, choice of a running mate, and the rhetoric used by many of the Republican convention’s speakers made it clear that the leopard hasn’t changed its spots.

The Trump-led GOP continues to prey on the fears........

© Common Dreams