That’s what would happen, all right. Recall that at an interview with Bill Reilly when he spoke of getting a COVID booster, he got booed by the audience.
As you alluded to, if someone did want to stage a shooting for sympathy’s sake, they wouldn’t shoot at the person’s ear. The slightest error would be fatal. They’d aim at the arm, leg, or somewhere else where, if things went wrong, the person would still have a good chance of survival.
Sadly I think many otherwise smart people such as yourself will continue to build foolish conspiracy theories around what happened. I’m seeing a lot of it and I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but in my opinion it creates a lot of disruption in the pursuit of actual truth an understanding.
There’s a fine line between hard-nosed realism and resigning oneself to failure. I’m not sure that AOC or those insiders have found themselves in the right place. AOC appears to want an echo chamber incapable of self-reflection or making hard choices.
I’m not sure “Trump is going to win and there’s nothing we can do about it” is a productive attitude.
Probably not. And yet, one still has to allocate resources. A dollar that goes to Biden is a dollar that doesn’t go to some downticket race. It’s probably unwise to put all available funds into the presidential election. Especially if there are other races that actually are likely wins but need some support.
Here’s Biden’s Oval Office speech from earlier tonight (starts at 31:41);
Well-delivered, IMO. He calls for calm and unity while reiterating, without attacking Trump directly, how important this election is and what he stands for.
Yeah, to AOC’s point - it’s one thing to say “well this puts us in a hole for sure” and another to go on to “might as well give up”. Even if you think that, you don’t say it out loud. And FWIW, holding the Senate and turning the House should have been on the agenda all along, anyway, regardless of what were up with the Presidential.
Just saying “we’re going to do all the things!” isn’t a strategy. This is perfectly obvious in other races, where you don’t pour funds into some red state seat that’s at -60%. It’s unwinnable so you just put in the token effort. But the same thing applies to every race.
I noticed some small Biden flubs in that speech. He said “the former Trump” and left out the President part that would have made that make sense. He also said “the battle box” instead of “the ballot box”.
I accept the fact that the odds of beating Trump right now are likely one in four or less with few paths to raising them. I’d love the odds to be better, and I am of the group that thinks a Harris candidacy would have more of a possibility of doing that. (Others disagree. Different threads. Yeah more than one.)
I also am no fan of AOC.
And I completely agree with her on this. One in four is far from zero and I suspect we can expect the unexpected. Giving up because you are losing is not realism. Few paths are not no paths.
Now admitted I’ve come around on this. But it isn’t rolling double sixes. A leader whose response to being behind is just give up should move along and make room for those who are ready to roll up their sleeves instead. It seems like Biden won’t step aside and our board position is … not good. The advantage? It frees you up to play to win.
I’m not saying AOC is completely wrong here. But calling for them to leave the party completely is a bit over the top.
Probably everyone needs to dial things back a bit. The one-in-four chance is something like “and then a miracle occurs”–but miracles do happen. So no, they should not give up completely. But nor is it unexpected that some of them would be running around like chickens with their heads cut off. It is a potentially result-changing event.
And they do have to be realistic about their chances. There’s only so much money and people. Not losing the Senate should probably be #1.
The prediction markets are basically saying now that it will be Biden vs. Trump. They had been giving Harris and others non-negligible chances of stepping in. But the assassination attempt seems to have solidified the race in their minds. News mindshare, recent less-disastrous public events, or something else? No idea.
I see one of two possibilities at work here;
- Trump was visited by three ghosts overnight and has become a changed man
- He’s had a legitimately smart idea and figured out an entire new way to BS people into supporting him
Can’t it be that someone else had a smart idea, and Trump is passing it off as his own?
Sure. But there is not shockingly an overlap of key Senate races and presidential battleground states.
Yeah there will be some ticket splitters, but D side turnout for president is key for these races. It is exactly why they are worried about the impact on their races. Just shifting money to them won’t be enough if Trump gets general election turnout and the D side looks like a midterm.
To win the key Senate races you need D turnout that only comes out in the general. And then some.
I concur with the possibility of “someone else’s idea”. Sometimes he is temporarily enthralled with an idea someone convincingly puts to him. He might well try to sound very uniting at the convention due to this idea. But then within 2 weeks tops he will be all about his former incoherent attacks on everything again, with an additional dollop of martyrdom added on top.
We will see but I’m not buying it. I fully expect the rhetoric from people like MTG, Rubio, JD Vance, Speaker Johnson et al to be loud, nasty and hateful. They stand a good chance of turning off millions of voters who are sick and tired of all the partisan bickering and hatred that is mostly being spread by the GOP.
Of course, I could be totally incorrect and they could turn over a new leaf and embrace all the groups they have been working overtime to demonize and start a National Unity campaign.
I’m not willing to bet a wooden nickel on it though.
If Trump can pivot towards "unity"he’s going to win going away at a gallop
Maybe the bullet did pass through a very particular part of his brain. Sort of a Phineas Gage thing.