Nobody could have predicted the stunning changes taking place in this year’s presidential election.

Former President Donald Trump narrowly escaped being assassinated. Incumbent U.S. President Joe Biden, a Democrat, was forced by aging problems to withdraw from the race. Vice President Kamala Harris grabbed the Democratic Party torch from Biden in an amazingly quick and impressive way. She swiftly began mounting her own campaign for 2024 via her party’s nomination for president.

Vice President Harris infused a youth and energy into the Democratic Party that had not been seen since the early Barack Obama presidential campaign in 2008.

Harris then picked her vice-presidential running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, who has a Ted Lasso charm along with proven political skills. He may help Harris and the Democrats compete more effectively against Team Trump.

Nobody can predict how the 2024 presidential election will turn out. There will probably be as many twists and turns as we have seen during the past few weeks.

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Economic volatility is likely even with an expected Federal Reserve Bank cut in interest rates. The conflict in the Middle East between Israel and Palestinian Hamas will probably get worse before it gets better. Security issues at the United States-Mexico border, a major Republican campaign issue, will continue to concern many voters. Inflation is coming down, yet slowly, and fears of an economic slowdown have increased.

The Democratic presidential ticket of Harris and Walz have a major challenge ahead of them. They must stage as unifying and inspiring a national convention in Chicago later this month as the Republican Party previously held in Milwaukee. Last week the Democrats got a good start toward that goal with the favorable publicity generated by the selection of Walz as the Democratic candidate for vice president.

Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro delivered an Obama-inspired stemwinder of a speech endorsing the Harris-Walz ticket. Harris followed up with an energetic and appealing introduction of her vice-presidential choice. And Walz, who most Americans had never heard of, came out swinging at the Republicans with a combination of Midwestern charm, progressive populism and an enthusiastic joy his audience loved.

Harris and Walz then went on a campaign road trip to several important swing states.

A Democratic rally in Philadelphia was an impressive kickoff to a whole new 2024 presidential election race.

The Democrats and their strategists are trying to redefine the race as the Democrats being the political party of the future and Donald Trump and the Republicans as the party of the past. Their new slogan is, “Don’t go back!” It is not clear whether this new Democratic slogan will work, but President Biden could not have tried it.

Democrats are also trying to accuse Trump and his vice-presidential candidate, Ohio U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance, of being “weird.” Some of Trump’s statements of late are somewhat dubious or of-putting. One example is his telling Christian voters they absolutely must vote in 2024, but they will not have to vote after 2024 because he will have fixed everything in his next 4-year term as president. That’s the strangest of civic injunctions. Savior complex?

Trump also continues to attack fellow Republicans such as Brian Kemp, the popular governor of Georgia, and Liz Cheney, who was an all-star member of the U.S. Congress from Wyoming. That has encouraged a “Republicans for Harris” movement.

Trump also strangely questioned Kamala Harris’ racial identity, suggesting she claims to be Asian-American and only recently claimed she is black. No one knows how Trump came up with this doozy. Trump should be aware 12% of Americans are of mixed-race heritage. Many of them do not appreciate Trump’s off-the-cuff character snipes about racial identity.

Meanwhile, Democratic campaigners are emphasizing a past J. D. Vance put-down of many Democratic officials. Because they had no children, he imprudently called them “childless cat ladies,” implying these kinds of people do not really have a stake in our country’s future.

He was referring to women like Vice President Harris and U.S. House of Representatives member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who do not have biological offspring. The problem with this remark is 15% to 20% of adult Americans, for a variety of reasons, do not have children, but they can vote.

Note, J.D., George Washington did not father children. No one has ever questioned whether he had a stake in America’s future.

The Republican ticket of Trump and Vance was preparing a campaign for running against the faltering President Joe Biden. The change of the Democratic candidate from Biden to Harris is forcing Trump and Vance to regroup and rethink their campaign. They seemed off balance for at least a week.

Republicans have some advantages in the 2024 presidential election. Many voters have a fear and dislike of illegal immigrants, so they resent the incumbent party’s inability to stem the southern border’s immigration flow. Another GOP asset is that former President Trump, for reasons that aren’t clear, still is rated positively by more voters on economic issues.

Republicans will be best served by re-embracing traditional Republican issues such as limited government, less government regulation, more energy development of oil and gas and a strengthened military.

The biggest challenge for the new Democratic nominees, Harris and Walz, is to convince independent voters they will be more centrist, more moderate and will address the rising U.S. government debt issue more aggressively than President Biden did. Democrats also must present a more convincing plan to deal with the large number of newcomers coming into the United States across the U.S.-Mexico border — and promise more to lower inflation.

Democrats have already won on the issue of “reproductive rights.” They would do well to now emphasize centrist economic issues.

Most of us would appreciate candidates of both political parties moving away from name calling and character smearing. We would like to see more deliberation about solutions to our mutually shared problems. Alas, tearing down your opponents is what the political consultants apparently are convinced is the best road to winning the White House. “Get their negatives to rise” is the cheapest way to victory. This is sad.

Things to look for as the election proceeds:

• President Joe Biden is a lame, lame duck. But what happens with the remainder of his presidency between now and Election Day in November could help or hinder Harris’ chances in the election.
• Trump did not appear to get much of a political bounce from his well-staged Republican convention. It may have been because of his disappointing acceptance speech, which wandered around and went too long.
• The Democratic ticket of Harris and Walz received a small bounce in the polls with the announcement of Walz’s selection as the vice-presidential candidate. Whether that movement in the direction of the Democrats can be sustained is unclear.
• Third-party candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is fading fast. His dumping of a dead bear in New York City’s Central Park wins him a “Weird Politician of the Week” award, even if this strange event happened 10 years ago.  This week’s New Yorker has a damaging essay on his character.
• Because the Electoral College, and not the popular vote, determines the winner of U.S. presidential elections, most of the campaigning in 2024 will be in states where the election is close. This year we will mainly see competitive campaigning for president in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada and Georgia. That does not seem fair, but the United States is not a pure democracy. It is a complicated federal republic.
• Although the November presidential election may seem far in the future, early voting in a few states begins in just a few weeks. Race on.

Tom Cronin and Bob Loevy are political columnists who write about Colorado and national elections.