The Past Month.

“Yes, we can” was the slogan of a presidential campaign that was unprecedented and initiated five decades after LBJ’s Civil Rights Act. Yes, it was Mr. Obama’s in 2008—Mr. Obama was a phenomenon, a personification of America in the 21^st century, a shift in both generation and cultural politics in the polity. The second to Mr. Obama’s is Ms. Harris; hers is an unexpected predicament. Most important of all, Ms. Harris serves as a figurehead to counter the rise and dominance of “The New Right.” 
 
I coin it as the Harrisnomenon.
 
The original match-up for the 2024 presidential election was between Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump, both of whom have been the standard bearers of their respective parties for years. The race was being called “the longest election” by commentators, as both parties were adamant and fixated pertaining to their choice of the top ticket. Adding to that, most were not paying that much attention to the election as it was a “repeat of 2020,” except for the political junkies.
 
No single individual could have predicted what transpired in the recent past—just the last month.
 
It begins with Mr. Trump being the first ever former American president to be convicted of crimes, and he is also the first nominee for president of one of the major parties to be convicted. This verdict further reinvigorated the MAGA movement, saying that “the Deep State is against them.” If only a deep state did exist. 
 
Fine. If this is not enough to be unprecedented, let’s continue.
 
On the 27^th of June, Americans witnessed the debate between the two “presumptive nominees” of the major parties. There are two reasons why the debate in Atlanta was unprecedented. Expect this word to be overused. First, it was the earliest ever debate held since the first between Nixon and Kennedy. The campaigns of Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump distanced themselves from the Commission on Presidential Debate, formulated their own schedule and rules for the debate, and agreed upon CNN being the first broadcaster for the monumental event. 58 million people watched the 2020 debate, so both knew the importance of their performance on stage in Atlanta. 
 
The debate was already unprecedented before it began, but it is also unprecedented after the debate. However, for another reason, everyone in the sane world would have come across Mr. Biden’s abysmal performance, attributed to his age. My thoughts could be read in a previous blog, “Worst Debate Ever.”.
 
The performance of Mr. Biden served as the last nail in the coffin for his aspiration to be president for a second term.
 
The following two weeks were dominated by news of dissent by Democratic lawmakers and off-the-record sentiments of the elders of the party, mainly Obama, Pelosi, Schumer, and Jefferies. Subsequently, after a dreadful period, Mr. Biden, unexpectedly, on a Sunday afternoon on the 21^st of July, announced at 1:46 p.m. on X that he had decided to drop out of the 2024 race.
 
Yes. This was unprecedented—a sitting president dropping last happened five decades ago, and that was not after the primaries had finished but during the primaries—it was Lyndon B. Johnson. This time it was a month before the convention, and the decision had high stakes.
 
I may be missing a fundamental part of this timeline.
 
Oh yes, I missed the happenings on the GOP side.
 
Weeks before Mr. Biden stepped down, on the 13^th of July, at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, Mr. Trump survived an attempted assassination. first in recent decades, the last was during the 1980s against Mr. Regan. The event raised questions about the workings of the Secret Service and their inadequate preparation before in the premise of the rally.
 
The technical intricacies beside—what instilled in everyone’s thought process—from that day are Mr. Trump with his fist pumping up in the air, surrounded by agents, and with an American flag above him—Mr. Trump shouting, “Fight, Fight, Fight.” A rallying call for his movement.
 
A moment that will be an inseparable part of history.
 
After this abhorrent act, most thought Mr. Trump would have a reincarnation—a different Mr. Trump—but of course he is not changing. He proved that he would remain a buffoon. And he substantiated the doubt during his crowning in the subsequent week in Milwaukee.
 
He picked J.D. Vance as his running mate—Rubio or Burgum would have been way better.
 
Mr. Vance, rather than being a positive notion, has in actuality decreased the chances of Mr. Trump returning to the Oval Office. Mr. Vance’s flip-flops from a never-Trumper to a Trump fanatic are widely known; his comment on childless cat ladies and his stance on abortion are not popular at all.
 
He is the most unpopular running mate in recent history. Mr. Vance has a net unfavourability; his performance is worse than that of Ms. Sarah Palin. 
 
Fine. What else could be unprecedented in a world full of unprecedented events one after the other?
 
Jumping back to Mr. Biden dropping out. He immediately endorsed his Veep. Ms. Harris was seen as incapable by her own administration and the party at large. But something just changed, and scholars will have to examine it in a later period. For now, yes, she has energized the American electorate.
 
From being a presumptive nominee in just a matter of days to securing endorsement from the left-right and center of the party, she has shown her political aptitude; things do not happen in a snap. She has put immense effort into the backdoor for all this to take place and crown herself as the first woman of color to receive a presidential nomination.
 
Ms. Harris is an answer to the New Right, which has secured great attention in the recent past. Her phenomenon will be clearly scripted after the Democratic Convention on August 19.
 
Let’s wait for more unprecedented events.
 
On a lighter note, Mr. Biden illustrated the positives of the American political system. As Ms. Harris could also relate to, he said, “Nowhere else on Earth could a kid with a stutter from modest beginnings in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and Claymont, Delaware, one day sit behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office as president of the United States. But here I am.” This exemplifies a tad bit of goodness in a rotten system.
 
The word unprecedented is no longer unprecedented; maybe next time another word would be appropriate to describe a seismic shift.