Peggy Noonan: This Is an 'Epochal' Election

This year's presidential election is no ordinary one, writes Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal. She makes clear that she doesn't think either former President Trump or President Biden is the right candidate for the moment and, more to the point, for the future. In assessing the state of things, she asserts that "we are not sufficiently noting that this isn't only a Trump election, it is also the first national election since the full impact of 2020 and its epochal changes sank in." In that "epic, nation-changing year," she writes, regular people got the sense "that some new ideology that doesn't even have a name had entered their lives on all levels, in their intimate family and work space."

Noonan uses the word "invaded" to describe how people feel by this unnamed ideology, one that she calls harmful to society and that makes us all "weaker and more divided." As a result of all this, she thinks people will want more options as Election Day nears. "Talk will turn seriously to a third-party bid," she predicts. "The great unanswered question will be whether those mounting that party have enough imagination to understand what they could be this year." Check out the full column. (More Election 2024 stories.)