2024 is a well-paced, thorough and often (darkly) humorous account ... I cannot say that I enjoyed reading this book. I often winced at the generous—at times, egregious—use of dramatic irony, and I was not terribly eager to relive the fateful twists and turns of the 2024 election ... But that’s hardly the authors’ fault ... There are also moments of levity ... A punishing read. But if we refuse to look for lessons in this depressing book, we might just keep becoming our own worst enemies.
By speaking to insiders on all sides of the debate, it lifts the lid on the near misses, fatal errors and lucky saves that led to the situation today ... 2024 is less a blow-by-blow account of a campaign than a dissection of the fragile political system that gave Trump a path back to power.
In 2024, we get retreads of...familiar what-ifs ... Yet, instead of explaining the backstory of such what-ifs, mostly we only get useless details ... The book also misses opportunities to clear up misinformation ... Some of the book’s revelations have also been broken already, by other books in this relentless genre ... The skimpiness of context most shows through with the authors’ account of October 7. The authors are, impressively, the first to take the war’s effect on the election seriously ... The authors convincingly argue how it affected the Democrats’ ability to recruit grassroots volunteers and to motivate the reluctant youth vote ... But they leave the war as a problem that rocked the campaign rather than analyze responses to it ... That lack of analysis means the subtitle...vastly over-promises ... With little analysis and scattered attention, the reading experience of 2024 resembles that of scrolling through headlines, opinion pieces and faulty polling. It wasn’t a fun experience last year, and I can’t say I would recommend it here either.
