What Could be the Game-Changing ‘October Surprise’ in the Run-Up to the 2024 Election?
17:59 GMT 31.10.2024 (Updated: 10:25 GMT 01.11.2024)
© AP Photo / Robert F. Bukaty
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As October draws to a close, one might wonder whether the much-talked-about ‘October surprise’, a game-changer in the run-up to Election Day, really did occur.
Sputnik has picked up on key events which could crucially influence the 2024 race:
Iran's strike on Israel on October 1, followed by Tel Aviv's retaliatory raid on October 26, has once again underscored the waning influence of the United States in the Middle East. Furthermore, it highlights the Biden-Harris administration's inability to iron out the escalating tensions in the region.
Sex trafficking charges against Sean 'Diddy' Combs were leveraged by Republicans to bash the Harris campaign and Democrats over their longstanding association with the rapper, who apparently belongs in the same company with convicted sex offenders, Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein.
Elon Musk's active participation in Trump's presidential bid was called "the October surprise" by the Washington Post. Musk contributed almost $75 million to a Trump-supporting PAC in the last three months.
Liberal mega-donors poured millions into Kamala Harris’ campaign. The sitting vice president ended up raising a total of $1 billion in less than three months, something that has never been done by any other presidential contender.
Kamala Harris faced plagiarism accusations regarding her 2009 book, "Smart on Crime." In contrast, Joe Biden was forced to withdraw from the 1988 presidential race due to similar allegations.
FEMA's inadequate response to the crises caused by Hurricanes Helena and Milton, which ravaged the southeastern battleground states, sparked a public outcry against the Biden-Harris administration.
October Surprise 2024? Political Scandals Just Entertainment, No Game Changers
"There was expectation of the so-called October surprise and there could have been several of them," former Pentagon analyst and US Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski told Sputnik, adding that despite a lot happening during this month, none of the events could be called a game changer.
Kwiatkowski assumed that neither the missile exchange between Iran and Israel nor the Ukraine crisis or other overseas events have had an impact on Americans, who "don't pay attention to foreign policy…, don't really care… [and] not impacted by it personally."
By contrast, rapper Sean 'Diddy' Combs's sex trafficking case has made some splash, since "the P. Diddy thing is quite interesting, it will implicate many people," the former Pentagon analyst noted.
"It's another Epstein Island situation, except probably far worse because it implicates many people in Hollywood and politicians who we do know the names of," Kwiatkowski specified.
The case, however, has fallen short of influencing the ongoing election cycle and Democrats with links to Diddy because most Americans "are cynical about the high moral character of our leadership," according to Kwiatkowski.
Likewise, US media speculations about Donald Trump's alleged "praise of Hitler" and accusations that he "groped" a woman in 1993 have left his supporters unimpressed.
"In [the] worst case scenario, they just say, well, you know, what do you expect? All the politicians are like this. We like Trump for this other reason, and we're going to ignore all this bad stuff," the pundit noted.
"I think it's very hard to move the meter in American politics through things like scandals. We find scandals in the mode of entertainment. So political scandals, they're entertaining. They don't really change our mind," Kwiatkowski concluded.
