This is #transitzone USA Election Update 12, recorded on Thursday 31 October 2024, Melbourne time.

Just days to go, United States time, to their 2024 voting day on November the 5th.

It has been an extraordinary and hyper intense period in USA political history from that CNN hosted debate between the incumbent president, Joe Biden and Donald Trump, on June 27th, the attempted assassination of Trump on July 13th in Butler, Pennsylvania, the triumphal GOP national convention, immediately after, from July the 15th and, after a roiling period within the Democratic party, Joe Biden stepped aside as their presidential candidate on Sunday afternoon July 21. Within 24 hours, Kamala Harris was the de facto replacement presidential candidate for the Democrats and the roughly hundred day presidential campaign was in full swing: Trump versus Harris.

The two met but once in a formal televised debate which, by general consensus, Harris won, and, during which, a dour and glowering Trump exclaimed, “They’re eating the dogs!” underscoring his campaign’s central theme – IMMIGRATION and the claimed flooding of American cities with illegal aliens.

All through this campaign, Trump has kept up his Big Lie of a stolen 2020 election and, as he did in 2016 and 2020, made it clear that, if he lost this 2024 election in the electoral college, he would again denounce it as “rigged” and a “fraud”.

Margo Kingston and Peter Clarke have charted the main events and key dynamics of the US election campaign over the last three months with a series of eleven #transitzone podcasts. As the election day looms, this time, a voice from Washington to helps them contextualise and analyse this historic and deeply consequential US presidential election.

John Lawrence has been a consummate Washington insider. For 38 years he served as a senior staffer in personal, committee and leadership offices in the US House of Representatives. From 2005 to 2013, John was Chief of Staff to now speaker emerita, Nancy Pelosi. He’s visiting professor at the University of California’s Washington Centre and the author of Arc of Power: Inside Nancy Pelosi's Speakership 2005-2010, and the The Class of 74: Congress After Watergate and the Roots of Partisanship. John contributes many articles on politics to leading journalism outlets and, as a sidebar activity in his “spare time” writes intriguing pastiches of Sherlock Holmes stories.

This is a feature length conversation.