“I’m not supposed to be here, I’m supposed to be dead,” Trump told the New York Post. “I’m supposed to be dead.”
“The doctor at the hospital said he never saw anything like this, he called it a miracle,” Trump also told the newspaper onboard his private plane while heading to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, for this week’s [Republican National Convention.] By luck or by God, many people are saying it’s by God I’m still here."
The narcissism couldn’t have been worse if he’d come back to life after three days.
Trump getting shot at while running for president is something that shouldn’t have happened. But Trump having a shot at being president isn’t something that shouldn’t have happened either.
In 2016, every Senate election went to the candidate of the same party as the Presidential election winner in that state. That’s the first time that has ever happened since the direct election of Senators was mandated by the 17 Amendment. In 2020, only one state split its vote between a Senator and President of different parties (Maine).
Split ticket voting has all but disappeared at the federal level, and I have a hard time seeing how an “abandon Biden” strategy could assist down ballot races.
I think this ends any possibility of Biden dropping out of the race (which was looking pretty improbable, anyway). It would look like he was quitting due to fear of assassination.
The polling inputs are all still pre-assassination-attempt over at FiveThirtyEight, but whatever else goes into their model has changed starkly. At the time of Trump’s rally in Pennsylvania, 538 had Biden up 52.4% to 47.2% (remainder was a tie result).
Over four points of that lead in the model evaporated last night – now it’s 50.2 - 49.4% (remainder for tie result).
That’s not a 4 point lead – that’s chances of victory. 52% to 50% is essentially no movement at all. The election is essentially a coin flip either way.
You’re correct. I thought it was helpful to convert the ratios to percentages to serve as a shorthand way of communicating the model’s result. Point taken all the same.
Intelligent people seem to get messed up with that all the time. Including thinking how horrible the predictions based on polls were that it was Clinton with a two to one odds favorite and she lost, as if things that have a one in three chance should not possibly ever occur.
Again the models other than the Silverless 538, including Silver’s, give current odds at three to one roughly. Up down some based on new polls and data. Again that is not great not time to just resign either. (Mixing my metaphors I’d be thinking about giving the back up quarterback a chance myself.)
By image, I assume you mean the ‘public image’ of the candidates, where Trump has called for and encouraged literal acts of violence against opponents, critics, and (by insinuation) legislators certifying elections. While it is objectively true that he has done so, you will find that his followers and supporters have downplayed his language, or in the extreme, argued for the necessity of it to ‘save the country’, et cetera.
In terms of literal images, Trump being carried off the stage with blood streaming off his face while defiantly shaking his fist is a potent image that evokes powerful sentiment, and of course has gotten near continuous coverage from the media. You can expect his campaign to use that image frequently along with words about how Donald Trump is a ‘fighter’, how he won’t be stopped, et cetera. It’s the perfect image for the strongman-type leader that Trump so aspires to be and that his devoted followers imagine of him.
It takes at least a few days to assemble a poll of any substantive value, and the situation around the shooters motives and background is still developing.
I fear that you are correct even though this is arguably a reason why Biden should step away and back someone else (even though he and the DNCC has utterly failed to develop viable alternative candidates). Now not only he’s does he look increasingly infirm and lethargic, but now his opponent looks ‘strong’ and energetic. I don’t see any way this doesn’t help Trump and hurt Biden’s chances in the election.
Is Trump going to continue looking strong and energetic, though? There are accounts he was already near-paranoid about assassination before this incident. Dial that paranoia to 11, add in PTSD triggered by things associated with crowds, and we may end up with a Trump who campaigns mostly by video from Mar-A-Lago.
He’ll show up for the National Convention because it’s a major prior commitment and in a controlled indoor environment. And because he hasn’t spoke in public since the incident so he doesn’t know yet if anything about a public-speaking milieu triggers PTSD.
But what if even the nearly-sterile RNC gets under his skin? Does he start cancelling rallies or making “special appearances” by video only? And what does the media do when a week, two weeks, etc. pass without rallies? The non-MAGA media, hungry for a new angle, will start asking why he isn’t attending rallies anymore. Or “appears” strictly by video, which in some ways is worse than an outright cancellation.
The senility issue: Biden has always been a poor speaker. He had a bad night at the debate. He is an old man and he probably does have “senior” moments. But even given all this, how has this become an issue where the Democrats are the ones defending themselves?
Donald Trump is almost as old as Biden and he’s in far worse shape, both physically and mentally. He wanders off into the middle of nowhere while giving speeches. He has even forgotten Joe Biden’s name on more than one occasion. It’s the Republicans who should be losing on the senile candidate front.
The same is true on issues like which candidate commits more sex crimes, which candidate takes more bribes from foreign governments, which candidate hires more family members - these are all issues where Trump is the one who should be on the defensive but somehow he’s being given a pass and the focus is on Biden.
I think the problem is that a lot of Democrats have lost sight of the reality that this is a contest between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. They’re acting like this is a contest between Joe Biden and some imaginary perfect candidate, in which Biden fails, and ignoring Trump.
Biden himself might see it that way, but I’m not sure anyone else would, given how much talk there was of him stepping down long before the shooting.
And anyway it doesn’t matter; if Biden steps down republicans will call him a coward, and a quitter and whatever else for 5 minutes, then focus their attacks on the new nominee. It was always going to be that way.
I don’t expect that this will be the case but even if it were Trump’s purported paranoia has now been quite publicly validated, and no doubt the conspiranoia crowd will attribute this to ‘Deep State’ plotting regardless of what a disaffected random wastoid the shooter turns out to be. But frankly, Trump loves his rallies and feeds off of the energy of the crowds even though he doesn’t actually want to mix with them. If the campaign ends up driving him to venues in an armored personnel carrier and putting him in a 2” thick polycarbonate box he’ll do it because this is now his true legacy.
I’m not going to relitigate here the issue of whether Biden is or is not more competent than recent appearances would indicate or whether Democrats should be obligated to back him as long as he can remain upright, but while Trump has never been a coherent speaker or had any amount of integrity, he is the ‘perfect’ candidate for donors who want a useful idiot they think they can bend to their will and voters looking for a demagogue promising to get their collective vengeance against a government they believe (not without reason) is serving corporate interests over the public, even if Trump himself is as venal and corrupt as the worst office holders in living memory. And even if he can’t speak in full sentences or complete a thought before he wanders onto the next notion that floats through his head, he at least speaks loudly and with some vigor.
The past few years has made it clear that much of the public doesn’t care about “sex crimes, which candidate takes more bribes from foreign governments, which candidate hires more family members,” et cetera as applies to their preferred strongman, even as they apply these criteria to unsubstantiated and often fabricated accusations toward Biden. The reality is that Trump stirs the economic and social fears (real and imagined) that the general public has and then promises himself as the cure (even though he does not and never has had a coherent policy on anything), even though his hypothetical presidency represents the greatest immediate existential threat to civil governance, economic prosperity, and national security.
I agree that the real leaders of the Republican party would like such a President but they had four years to find out that Trump, while an idiot, is more useless than useful. He’s too stupid to realize he’s an idiot. He thinks he’s a stable genius who is smarter than everyone else and should be making all the decisions. (Plus he’s lazy so he doesn’t like to do anything, good or bad.)
I imagine businessmen felt the same frustrations with Trump that Putin did. They had to keep cajoling and reminding him to do the things he should have just done the first time he was told to do them. Trump’s essentially a seventy-eight year old toddler.
That’s right. Trump’s public image is now “strength”–more so since the rally incident. And Biden’s public image is now “weakness.” And less-informed voters will vote accordingly.
100% this. Trump’s rallies will continue. Fantasies of him cowering in Mar-a-Lago are just that: fantasies. Given the news about his documents case being dismissed, today, he may well believe quite sincerely that nothing truly bad can happen to him. The universe loves him and will protect him–so he will continue to campaign.
Yes. Biden’s ego won’t let him step aside, no matter what the reason–‘they’ll call me a quitter’ may be the latest one, but it doesn’t matter what the latest excuse is. He wants to be President and he’s convinced himself he can go on being President (by winning).
However, wiser heads in the Democratic Party do know better. I don’t see them just burying their heads in the sand because Trump got a Hero boost from the rally incident. They will continue to work, if quietly, to convince Joe of the reality of this situation.
Will they succeed? We have, practically speaking, a few more weeks to find out. Once the Dem convention happens, we are stuck with the guy who voters see as “weak”–the guy who will do nothing except read speeches off teleprompters in a futile hope of changing that image.
Of course. He is the Messiah sent here by God. This meme was inevitable. What remains unexplained is how come God, in his supposed omnipotence, allowed the shooter to get up there in the first place. Perhaps God is as incompetent as the Secret Service. These paradoxes never occur to the True Believers.