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Biden’s Exit and the 2024 Election Are Outdoing the Drama of ‘Veep’ and ‘Scandal’

Step aside, 'Veep,' 'Scandal' and 'House of Cards': Biden dropping out of the 2024 election and endorsing Harris shows truth is stranger than fiction.

From the murderous hijinks surrounding the Fitzgerald Grant administration on “ Scandal ” to the skullduggery that allowed Frank Underwood to climb the federal government like a ladder on “House of Cards” to the whipsawing reversals of fortune that befell Selina Meyer on “ Veep,” TV was the staging-ground for a feverish national imagination. But — all before Labor Day, said to be when most normal, non-online people (whoever they may be) tune into elections — we have so far seen a would-be assassin try to kill Trump, which briefly paused the ultimately successful effort to convince the incumbent president to abandon his re-election bid. Shows like “Veep” and “House of Cards” exist in the context of “24,” with its endlessly swapped-out presidents, and of “The West Wing”: The more cynical and more recent programs seem like a jaded response to the Aaron Sorkin-created NBC drama about the idealists who saved America every week from 1999 to 2006.

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