The best and worst of 2024

OPINION:

The past year was filled with many great moments and others that were not so great. Here are my thoughts on some of the best and worst of 2024. 

Best: The election of Donald Trump as president was the political highlight of the year. After a disastrous term for President Biden, it was reassuring to see that Mr. Trump not only won the Electoral College vote but also took the popular vote and carried every one of the battleground states (including my home state of Wisconsin). 

The key to victory was staying on message. Voters were rightly concerned about high prices, border security, public safety and cultural issues such as men in women’s sports and locker rooms. Mr. Trump overcame the financial advantage of the Biden-Harris campaign with historic earned media focus on the issues and authenticity. 

Worst: Incumbents are routinely rough in the first debate, but Mr. Biden took being bad to a new level. The referees would have called the fight if it had been a boxing match. Mr. Biden could barely assemble a series of simple answers to basic questions. It was painful to watch and raised the serious question of why those in his Cabinet had not considered invoking the 25th Amendment. 

Worst: Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign was a total bust. The extremely high turnover rate for her staff indicates that she does not review information provided to her by her team. That was clear when she went on “The View” and could not give a single example of something she would have done differently from Mr. Biden. At a time when voters were upset with the status quo, being against the guy who shakes up the status quo was a losing strategy. 

Best: Senate Republican candidates won critical races that will give the GOP the majority this month. While wins in West Virginia and Montana were all but certain, the victories in Pennsylvania and Ohio were solid wins in states that went for Mr. Trump. The four new Republican senators should aggressively advocate for the president and his agenda. 

Worst: The cover-up by White House staff, Democrats in Congress and many in the media became clear after Mr. Biden’s disastrous debate performance in June. So many in the media have acted shocked since Mr. Biden pulled out of the campaign. Still, it is increasingly clear that Ms. Harris, White House staff, Democratic leaders and many in the media have overlooked his obvious cognitive failures since January 2021.

Best: Republicans in Virginia have a united front going into the November 2025 elections. Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears will run to succeed term-limited Gov. Glenn Youngkin, and Attorney General Jason Miyares will run for reelection. Winning in Virginia will be tough in 2025, but avoiding an ugly primary campaign is a good first step toward victory. These races will be a preview of the 2026 election. 

Worst: Encampments popped up on campuses nationwide last spring. Most of them violated university rules. In some cases, they were even in conflict with state law.

On many campuses, administrators ignored these standards and allowed extremists to pitch tents and occupy major parts of their campuses. Some even went as far as blocking Jewish students from accessing parts of their campus. When Young America’s Foundation tried to help students at the University of California, Los Angeles, bring a speaker to campus to counter the pro-Hamas demonstrators, school administrators stopped the event from happening moments before it was supposed to start. 

Best: Young America’s Foundation took UCLA administrators to court over violating the free speech rights of the students on campus. Once the foundation had filed the suit, we brought Ben Shapiro to UCLA to counter the extremists. We also helped students across the country put up American and Israeli flags at their schools to draw attention to the hostages taken and held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip. We will not back down from sharing the truth. 

Worst: A judge in Dane County, Wisconsin, ruled against the Act 10 reforms I signed into law years ago. Even though the law has been upheld in federal and state courts, this judge deemed it unconstitutional. The law did not change, but the makeup of the state Supreme Court did. Now, big government union bosses are betting on them to change the law. 

Best: Several cases the U.S. Supreme Court decided were big wins for the conservative movement in the last year. One overturned the 1984 decision in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council. Before this past year, the courts had to generally defer to a federal agency’s reasonable interpretation of an ambiguous law.

Personal best: My son Matt married Erica on New Year’s Eve. Tonette and I now have two wonderful daughters-in-law. We are blessed. 

Have a happy new year. 

• Scott Walker is president of Young America’s Foundation and served as the 45th governor of Wisconsin.