2024 U.S. Presidential Election (EasternSky)

The 2024 Presidential Election was the sixtieth Presidential Election. Incumbent president Joe Biden of Delaware decided to not run for reelection due to his advanced age.

Democratic Primaries
President Joe Biden decided that he was too old to continue serving as President and as a result he decided against running. The Democrats decided that they wanted a younger candidate, and two stood out: Beto O'Rourke, the Vice President, and Chris Van Hollen, a Senator from Maryland. The two battled it out in the Primaries before Chris was declared the nominee for President. He chose Claire McCaskill, a former Senator from Missouri, as his running mate. McCaskill is the third woman to run for Vice President on a major party ticket, after Geraldine Ferraro in 1984 and Sarah Palin in 2008. However, people noted that, because he was born in Pakistan, he was ineligible to hold office. Congress then passed the 28th Amendment, which allowed naturalized citizens born outside the U.S. to run for President just so that Van Hollen would be able to run.

Republican Primaries
The Republican Primaries were fiercely competitive, with 7 candidates declared: James Lankford, a Senator from Oklahoma, Thomas Massie, a Representative from Kentucky, Shelley Moore Capito, a Senator from West Virginia, Asa Hutchinson, the former Governor of Arkansas, Dana Rohrabacher, a former Representative from California, Mike Crapo, a Senator from Idaho, and Scott Walker, the former Governor of Wisconsin. Walker was the first candidate to drop out, followed by Rohrabacher. After a disappointing Super Tuesday performance, Moore Capito would suspend her campaign, leaving Lankford, Massie, Hutchinson, and Crapo to go into the convention. Lankford won the nomination for President. He chose Jerry Moran, a Senator from Kansas, to be his running mate.

General Election
The issues of the time were the increasing military involvement in the Middle East, the rising oil prices, the controversies surrounding the practice of gerrymandering, and statehood for the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Van Hollen and Lankford attacked each other on these issues and more, such as abortion, gay marriage, gun rights, climate change, and election spending by corporations.