The 2024 Presidential Election

During the Institute’s earliest days, it addressed America’s 2024 presidential election in three powerful ways.

     First, New Statecraft published in The Washington Post a half-page advertorial titled “Finding the Strongest Presidential Nominee.” In August 2023, New Statecraft argued emphatically that the Democratic Party should not coronate Joe Biden with the party’s nomination. Even at that early date, the Party was on track to re-nominate Biden without a single substantial competitor. Our article identified numerous worthy challengers. It also outlined a more ambitious presidential platform that went far beyond tepid and inconsequential tinkering with the status quo.

     Second, Research Director Thomas O’Brien published the Bolder Answers Blog in which he offered the Harris-Walz campaign several specific recommended changes to their platform. These blog posts featured proposals from well outside the politics-as-usual pablum typical of the duopoly. For example, the Blog urged the campaign to make concrete commitments to bipartisanship, including a Cabinet comprised heavily of moderate Republicans (like Senators Corker, Flake, Murkowski, Portman, or Romney). The Institute still emphatically maintains that such a bipartisan spirit would have served the nation nobly, and that adopting many of the proposals from the Blog would have ensured a decisive Harris-Walz victory.

     Third, the Institute published Combatting Disinformation, a compendium of testimonials from widely respected public officials, academics, journalists, and third-party verifiers establishing that the outcome of the 2020 presidential election was not determined by vote-fraud. Regardless of the merits and demerits of the two major-party nominees for President, the 2024 race prominently featured the preposterous allegation by Donald Trump that Biden was actually defeated in 2020 and was given the presidency by fraud. Some readers today might believe it was fortunate that Trump defeated Harris in 2024. But NSI recognized that the lie about fraud in the 2020 presidential election was of such a pernicious nature that the Institute sought to provide undeniable proof of its falsity. To this end, our database has documented for posterity that the “The Big Lie” was damnable and must be forever refuted and condemned as a calumny against democracy.

     We invite readers to peruse these inaugural projects of the Institute, available via the hypertext links above.