Several “winners” and “losers” have emerged in 2024, as the year draws to a close after Republicans took control of Congress in November’s elections and several prominent Democrats ended up on the Republican side. losers.
WINNER – President-elect Donald Trump
Media pundits largely dismissed Trump after he left office and claimed his political career was over following the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riots and House impeachments. That criticism intensified after he found himself facing indictments in several different jurisdictions and after battling several prominent Republicans in the GOP primaries.
However, Trump weathered the political storm while surviving two assassination attempts and won back the White House in November. many have described as the greatest political comeback in American political history.
From left: Vice President Kamala Harris, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, Vice President-elect JD Vance.
Trump will be sworn in as the 47th president of the United States on January 20 for a term that will be bolstered by Republican control of the House and Senate for at least the next two years.
LOSER – Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz
President Biden made history this summer when he withdrew from the presidential race under pressure from many in his own party and essentially handed the reins to his vice president despite calls to organize an open primary process.
After several months of campaigning and a billion-dollar spending blitz, Harris ultimately failed to convince voters that the Biden-Harris administration’s policies should be continued with four years of the Harris presidency.
Harris lost both the popular vote and the Electoral College to Trump, and Republicans gained enough seats to maintain control of the House and regain control of the Senate.
THE MOST AWESOME PEOPLE OF 2024. LEFT AND RIGHT CAN AGREE ON AT LEAST 2
Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Harris and his running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, arrive at a campaign rally in Philadelphia on August 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
Harris was widely criticized for his decision to choose Walz as his running mate, with many political experts arguing that Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro was the optimal choice. Walz had been characterized by many media outlets as a likeable and popular governor who brought “Midwest charm” to the ticket, but who also constantly brought negative attention to the campaign with a series of gaffes and controversial statements about his past military service.
“Historically, vice presidents have little impact on the fate of a presidential candidate,” Rob Bluey, president and editor-in-chief of the Daily Signal, told Fox News Digital last month.
“But in the case of Tim Walz, it turned out to be a disastrous decision that doomed Kamala Harris from the moment she made it. Not only was Walz ill-prepared to face the national spotlight and scrutiny media scrutiny, but Harris left out several better options Since Americans knew little about Harris or his policy positions, they were right to question his judgment on this big decision.
WINNER – Elon Musk
The CEO of Tesla and SpaceX officially threw his support behind Trump shortly after the former president survived a failed assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July.
Musk quickly became a fixture on the campaign trail and spoke at a rally at the site of the assassination attempt.
“As you can see, I’m not just MAGA. I’m Dark MAGA,” Musk joked at the gathering in October, a nod to the Dark Brandon meme. He called the upcoming elections on November 5 “the most important elections of our lifetime.”
Over the past few months, Musk has positioned himself as a key voice within the Trump administration and has been seen several times at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida – some media outlets have reported that he lived on the property – and his influence grew to the point that liberal pundits are accusing him to be the “co-president”.
Musk, alongside former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, was appointed by Trump to lead the new Department of Government Effectiveness, which has already made waves in Washington, D.C., with elected officials on both sides supporting the The agency’s stated goal of reducing spending. government waste.
LOSER – George Soros
2024: THE YEAR OF PRO-TRUMP CELEBRITIES BECOME GREAT FAMILIES
Billionaire and left-wing philanthropist George Soros (Jason Alden/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The Soros slot that has supported progressive lawmakers and prosecutors across the country suffered significant losses in blue California on election night, when voters overwhelmingly rejected progressives on the issue of crime.
California voters overwhelmingly voted in favor of Proposition 36, which rolled back key provisions of Proposition 47, touted by the state’s Democrats as progressive crime reform that would make the state safer.
When Proposition 47 passed in 2014, it downgraded most thefts from felonies to misdemeanors if the amount stolen was less than $950, “unless the defendant has previously been convicted of murder, rape , certain sexual offenses or certain crimes committed with a firearm.”
Progressives suffered another major loss in Los Angeles, where Attorney George Gascón, co-author of Proposition 47 and supported by Soros, was defeated by former federal prosecutor Nathan Hochman, as crime was seen as one of the top issues of the election cycle.
In another loss for Soros-backed prosecutors in the Golden State, Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price was recalledless than two years into office, following backlash over his alleged soft-on-crime approach.
Democratic Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao, who faced heat from constituents amid rising crime, was also ousted from office after her recall bid passed with 65% of voters. voice.
In San Francisco, where crime is a top concern among voters, Democratic Mayor London Breed lost his re-election campaign.
“I think it goes beyond just a message from those who care about crime,” said Cully Stimson, senior law fellow at the Heritage Foundation and co-author of the book “Rogue Attorneys: How Radical Soros Lawyers Are Destroying America’s Communities.” told Fox News Digital.
“This is a massive mandate and a cry for help from the general population: we want our state back, we want our counties back, and we want our cities back and our experiences “failed social organizations have had enough time, and they are an absolute, catastrophic failure.”
WINNER – Vice President-elect JD Vance
TRUMP’S CONVINCING 2024 VICTORY PUTS HOUSE GOP AT HOME FIELD ADVANTAGE IN 2026 MIDTERM ELECTIONS
Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, Vice President-elect, leaves the Senate chamber as lawmakers work on an interim spending bill at the Capitol on Dec. 18, 2024. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
The popular narrative among left-wing pundits during the presidential election cycle was that Trump’s choice for vice president, Ohio Republican Sen. J.D. Vance, would alienate voters with a personality they deemed unlikable .
Contrary to this narrative, Vance has cemented himself as a formidable force in conservative politics, appearing on a variety of podcasts, holding frequent press conferences and delivering a debate that several polls suggested he won.
Vance held a 34% approval rating when he joined Trump on the ticket. This number exploded over the following months, and A really clear policy has been reported by mid-November, his approval rating had climbed to 44%.
“I thought people would be more upset with JD Vance,” MSNBC host Rachel Maddow said. told Semafor this week.
Vance, 40, will be the third-youngest vice president in American history when he is sworn in next month. While the Constitution prevents Trump from seeking another term, Vance is already considered a front-runner for the Republican nomination in the 2028 presidential election.
“We’ll have four more years of Trump, and then eight years of JD Vance,” Donald Trump Jr. said in October on the campaign trail.
Young Trump, who is a powerful ally of the vice president-elect, is extremely popular with the MAGA base.
“The vice president will be in the catbird seat, there’s no doubt about it,” longtime Republican consultant Dave Carney recently told Fox News Digital.
LOSING – Democratic Senate incumbents
En route to taking control of the Senate, Republicans managed to unseat several Democrats who had spent decades in the House.
Senator Sherrod Brown represented Ohio in the Senate since 2007 before losing in November to his Republican challenger, businessman Bernie Moreno. Brown, considered one of the most vulnerable members of the Senate before the election, had tried to present himself as a moderate to Ohio voters who ended up voting for Moreno in a state that Trump won by 11 points.
Democratic Sen. Bob Casey, from a prominent family in Pennsylvania politics, has represented the state in the Senate since 2007 and was long considered one of the toughest incumbents to defeat until he lost against Republican challenger Dave McCormick in November.
McCormick, a 59-year-old businessman, beat Casey by a razor-thin margin of 0.2% after capitalizing on Trump’s approval and dissatisfaction with the economy that Biden and Harris have presided over for four years.
“We’ve heard a common refrain. The message we’ve heard over and over again is that we need change. The country is going in the wrong direction. We need leadership to get our economy back on track and get this horrible situation under control. inflation,” McCormick said. said after the election.
Montana Sen. Jon Tester, who also joined the Senate as a Democrat in 2007, suffered a similar fate in November after losing his seat to former Navy SEAL Tim Sheehy.
Tester had taken more moderate positions in recent years, breaking openly with the Biden-Harris administration on several issues over the years, but that wasn’t enough to win over voters in Montana, where Trump won by nearly 20 points.
David Rutz, Paul Steinhauser and Cortney O’Brien of Fox News Digital contributed to this report.