There was a lot in 2024 that was troubling, but the worst is what we decided is OK | Opinion

In 2000 as then-Democratic-presidential-candidate Al Gore was preparing for an all-important debate with the Republican nominee George W. Bush, a woman named Juanita Yvette Lozano decided to help the then-vice president. She stole more than 120 pages of notes and a 60-minute videotape of secret Bush debate preparations and sent it to the Gore campaign. It would have given Gore a decisive advantage in what would turn out to be one of the closest races in American history.

Lozano pled to mail fraud and lying to the grand jury.

But her efforts were for naught. Upon receiving the political gold, Gore campaign official Rep. Thomas Downey of New York quickly gave the materials to his lawyer, who immediately sent it to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Gore made it known he agreed with that decision. Upholding the tenets of democracy was more important.

Though Downey, who was Gore’s debate prep partner, resigned from the campaign to ensure there wouldn’t even be a hint of impropriety, the Bush campaign spent weeks suggesting the Gore campaign was responsible. It was later learned Lozano was associated with the Bush campaign.

It remains one of the most remarkable incidents in modern American politics and may have been the deciding factor in a race that came down to “butterfly” ballots and “hanging chads” in Florida, and a still-egregious Supreme Court decision. Had the Democratic candidate’s camp decided to use Bush’s secret debate prep against him, it could have made Gore president. He only needed a few hundred extra votes in Florida — there were about six million cast in the state — to be propelled to the White House.

Instead, Gore took the high road. Sixteen years later, Donald Trump would make the opposite choice. He pressured fellow Republicans in Georgia and other states to assign him votes he had not earned. He then inspired a violent insurrection attempt on the United States Capitol to overturn an election he did not win. And in 2024, nearly half of the American voters sent a clear message that what Trump did was either perfectly fine, or, at least, not disqualifying.

Little has been more disquieting about 2024. This past year, the American public proclaimed little to nothing is off limits in the pursuit of political power. It hearkens back to our worst days, such as in 1898 when white supremacist mobs were attacking Black and white people who had the temerity to try and form a multi-racial government in Wilmington, N.C., or Benjamin “Pitchfork” Tillman bragging in the late 19th century that it was acceptable for mobs to lynch Black people in South Carolina for political power.

This past year, debates about abortion access were necessary and excruciating as we learned about a growing number of pregnant women being denied life-saving care. The debate about trans people and their access to health care, or even the right to play a sport, has often turned ugly. There was so much misinformation swirling that residents of western North Carolina began balking at receiving the help they desperately needed while trying to dig themselves out of the aftermath of the state’s worst natural disaster. Some of them were convinced the help was a conspiracy in disguise, the worst kinds of conspiracies given that they are rising in number as the oceans are rising due to climate change and essentially guaranteeing we’ll have to be dealing with more such disasters in the coming years.

And we heard on the presidential debate stage false claims that Haitians immigrants — in the country legally — were eating people’s pets.

There’s a lot to unpack about 2024’s political environment.

But nothing tops the country’s decision to reappoint the man who inspired an insurrection.

In a country that cherishes a healthy democracy, such a result would have been unfathomable. Too bad that one no longer exists here — or maybe never did.

This story was originally published December 31, 2024 at 9:28 AM with the headline "There was a lot in 2024 that was troubling, but the worst is what we decided is OK | Opinion."