Am I the only one who thinks 2024 was a wild year? I don’t know. At any rate, let’s take it month by month and review a few things the year had in store for us.
In January, Iowa Republicans turned out in droves on a bitterly cold night for the 2024 Iowa caucuses. The wind chill at 7 p.m. in Cedar Rapids was about -20°. Despite a well-funded effort from challengers including former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, the caucuses were called for former President Donald Trump before some precincts had even distributed ballots.
Democrats had caucuses, too, which were attended by at least … well, I guess the number of caucusgoers is the least of their problems while Iowa Democrats sort out the future of their presidential nominating contest.
In February, Special Counsel Robert Hur released a report on the investigation into the unauthorized handling of classified documents by President Joe Biden in his Delaware home and other locations.
Although the investigation had “uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen,” Hur’s team declined to charge the President, deciding that a jury would likely side with him as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” An inspiring description of the President of the United States if we ever heard one.
I know politically significant things happened in March, but Iowans were all-in on college basketball, and for good reason: Iowa Hawkeyes women’s star Caitlin Clark broke the all-time NCAA basketball scoring record that month and became the most famous athlete in the world. I’m likely not exaggerating, either.
Also, the Iowa State Cyclones’ men advanced to the Sweet Sixteen for the second time in the third year of Coach T.J. Otzelberger’s tenure, and the Iowa Hawkeye men netted their 15th straight Sweet 16 non-appearance under coach Fran McCaffery.
In April, millions of Americans flocked to certain parts of the country to witness the rare occurrence of a total solar eclipse. Expecting huge crowds, multiple jurisdictions declared a state of emergency in anticipation of “widespread and significant impact” to roads and other critical infrastructure. Traffic was tied up for hours as people left to return home.
All of that wildness was so that we could witness day turning to night in the middle of the afternoon for about four minutes. And it was awesome.
May began with encampments popping up on college campuses all over the country, as anti-Israel protesters took advantage of the fact that most university administrators are terrified of a bunch of 18- to 23-year-olds taking on massive debt to pay the huge sums of tuition at their institutions.
Juden were verboten from the encampments — unless they were the right kind of Jews that wore kaffiyehs and denounced Zionism. (The actual definition of “Zionism” was rather fluid.)
The month continued with the first criminal trial of former President Donald Trump, and ended with Trump’s conviction on 34 counts of felony charges that somehow only found their way onto the docket after seven years and a new Soros-funded prosecutor.
Then came June, and things got crazy.
11 days after Trump became the first president to be convicted of a felony (or 34 of them,) First Son Hunter Biden became the first son of a sitting president convicted on criminal charges. The elder Biden pledged before a fawning press that he would not pardon his son or commute his sentence.
Around that same time, videos began to circulate widely showing the President in an apparently diminished cognitive state — at a D-Day event in early June, a Juneteenth concert on the White House lawn a few days later, the G7 summit in Italy, and finally at a ritzy June 18 fundraising gala in Los Angeles.
The fawning press piled on to fact-check the videos, calling them “deceptive” and “misleading.” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre suggested the videos were “cheap fakes,” a term she had not coined but was happy to advance.
The jig was up on June 27, as no amount of gaslighting could hide the President’s obvious decline from the 51 million viewers who turned into the first presidential debate on CNN. Calls for Biden to exit the race began that same night while the rest of us wondered just who in the hell was actually leading the country. (We’re still wondering, for what it’s worth.)
Before the week was out, the Iowa Supreme Court issued its seismic ruling that Iowa’s 2018 law prohibiting abortions after the detection of a fetal heartbeat can be enforced.
As for July … whoa.
An attempt was made on Trump’s life at an outdoor rally on July 13, which likely would have been fatal had Trump not turned his head at the most serendipitous moment.
On July 15, the Republican National Convention kicked off, where Trump appeared, bandaged ear and all, alongside his newly announced vice presidential pick, Sen. JD Vance.
Three days after the GOP convention wrapped, Biden announced in a letter that he was dropping out of the presidential race. But he was still as sharp as a tack upstairs, you guys. Like, seriously.
Biden quickly endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to succeed him as the Democratic nominee.
By the time August rolled around, the Biden — I mean, Harris campaign had raised an astounding $310 million. Big-dollar backers who initially held onto their cash in order to force Biden out finally had their reason to come back around. Harris, now the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, announced that she had chosen Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, and the Democratic National Convention proceeded on a theme of “joy.”
Speaking of joy, September kicked off with the annual Cy-Hawk football game at Kinnick Stadium in Iowa City. The Iowa State Cyclones beat the Iowa Hawkeyes 20-19 in a come-from-behind thriller. (It’s my column and I’ll mention the Cyclones as frequently as I want.)
Speaking of coming from behind, presidential polling showed Harris having reversed Biden’s polling deficit, making for a race too close to predict. Harris bested Trump in the Sept. 10 presidential debate, and her well-rehearsed performance gave hope to the idea that she might be capable of this one thing that the media likes to do called an interview.
Also in September, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled that all three of the Congressional candidates nominated by the Libertarian Party of Iowa would not appear on the Nov. 5 ballot due to a significant legal error by the party, disappointing Democrats (whether they admitted it or not) who were hoping that Libertarian candidates would draw votes away from Republican incumbents.
The first day of October brought the vice presidential debate. A smooth, confident Vance triumphed over Walz, who struggled to come up with a coherent explanation about why he had repeatedly claimed to be in China during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests when he was actually … in Nebraska.
On Oct. 16, Iowa’s 20-day early voting period began, for which voters turned out in droves. And though your friendly neighborhood opinion columnist is unabashedly biased in saying so, early voting workers made our great state proud through their diligent and dedicated work.
For some reason, I can’t recall anything terribly noteworthy happening in November. Send me an email if you think I’m forgetting something.
Of course, December started off with a bang. On Dec. 1, President Biden issued a full and unconditional pardon of his son, Hunter Biden — yeah, that same guy he insisted not six months earlier he would absolutely not pardon.
Accordingly, PolitiFact deemed the “Lie of the Year” to be … not that, actually. Apparently Trump’s dumb claim about migrants eating cats was far more consequential to the American public than a sitting president issuing his own son a get-out-of-jail-free card after insisting he wouldn’t.
On Dec. 4, a health insurance CEO who was also an Iowa native was shot in cold blood in a “brazen, targeted attack” outside his hotel in New York City. Unfathomably, many have hailed the alleged shooter as a hero. The rest of us are questioning how so many in a privileged society can have such a clouded view of basic morality.
Speaking of morality, the White House announced on Dec. 23 that President Biden has commuted the sentences of 37 inmates on federal death row, all of whom had been convicted of exceptionally heinous crimes. Merry Christmas to the victims and their families.
No, my little summary isn’t a complete list of the events of 2024. Not to mention, there are still two days left — who knows what could happen?
Either way, we’re near the end, ready to close out this roller coaster of a year.
But don’t unbuckle that seat belt just yet. Time moves whether we want it to or not, and we’re about to move with it — right into 2025.
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