This year, Halloween was a welcome respite from the terrors of the 2024 election, with ghoulish Donald Trump and J.D. Vance heading the GOP ticket. I welcomed Halloween, despite dreading it as a child.

Although our parents made us fabulous costumes, I hated trick or treating: Even with warm weather I felt cold, and I never cared much for sweets. After our parents examined our legally gathered loot to ensure it contained no hidden razor blades, I gave my treats to my sweet-toothed sister.

Now, I love seeing kids run up our driveway to get their candy and tell us who they are dressed as — with parents waiting at the bottom of the driveway for the younger ones. This wasn’t needed when we were kids — how times have changed!

My all-time favorite was an elementary-school girl who appeared in a lettered school sweater, pleated skirt, bobby socks and saddle shoes, her face painted white with thick black circles surrounding each eye and black lipstick.

“Who are you dressed as?” we asked.

“A dead cheerleader,” she replied. “My mommy made my costume!” she added with delight.

“Your mommy did a fine job!” I said cheerily. Could it be that Mommy hadn’t made the cheering squad in high school and so was finally getting her well-deserved revenge?

My 2024 favorite was a middle-school girl who proudly said she was dressed as the great Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, complete with her mono-eyebrow, rose-covered hairdo and gorgeous colorful outfit. Her mommy no doubt loved art and expressed that love artfully and lovingly.

Then there was the middle-school boy who said his beautiful blue silk, sequined robe was made by his grandmother, so he could appear “dressed as a king.” He said he wears it still, even though “it’s too small now.” Brava, Grandma!

All this got me thinking about our 2024 presidential tickets. Who have those candidates dressed as throughout their campaigns?

To be sure, Kamala Harris always appeared dressed as herself — a tough, fair-minded former attorney general of California and now a smart, articulate, disciplined politician whose Biden-induced truncated campaign has dazzled many, including me.

Tim Walz, too, always showed up dressed as himself — a white middle-class guy who taught high school, coached the football team, served in the military and now serves as governor of Minnesota to considerable acclaim.

Harris and Walz offered Americans democracy-enhancing treats in promising dedicated efforts toward social, economic, racial and gender justice. Though several factors no doubt contributed to their defeat, I lay much of the blame at the feet of Joe Biden, whose decision to run for a second term cost the Democrats a proper primary.

Donald Trump also never failed to arrive dressed as himself — a racist, sexist demagogue to the core; our own home-grown wannabe authoritarian. Even when he donned a sanitation-worker safety vest to demonstrate that it is Biden/Harris who view Americans as trash, that costume only amplified his identity, as did his posing as a McDonald’s aproned employee to mockingly challenge Harris’s statement that she worked at a McDonald’s during high school.

By contrast, J.D. Vance’s attire has been harder to decipher: Prior to getting into politics he presented himself as thoroughly anti-Trump, calling Trump “America’s Hitler.” Now he’s all in with the would-be dictator. Although his costume was the same in both incarnations, he has spoken about Trump most approvingly since running for the Ohio U.S. Senate in 2022.

Trump and Vance offered Americans antidemocratic, racist and sexist tricks on the campaign trail. Yet because their goals and tactics were announced openly and demonstrated repeatedly — the razor blades in their “treats” were hardly hidden — those who voted for them in the name of freedom are in my view just tricking themselves, either by way of willful ignorance or self-deception.

The vast numbers of Americans who voted for Trump in 2024 ensure that our democracy will continue to be imperiled, not least owing to the refusal of craven GOP leaders to renounce his agenda. My hope now is that once Trump assumes office, his sure-to-be failure to make his 2024 voters’ lives better — and likelihood of making most Americans’ lives worse — will remind those who switched to Biden in 2020 of why they did so.

Because I’m a psychologist, today people are asking me how I’m coping with this profound setback for America’s democracy. I tell them I’m using a highly sophisticated psychological technique: getting rid of the garbage in my basement.

Barbara S. Held, Ph.D. is a Barry N. Wish professor of psychology and social studies emerita at Bowdoin College.