Fire Hose
The last two weeks have been a lot
You don’t need me to tell you how unsettling the last two weeks have been. When I mapped out my July writing schedule, I earmarked this morning for a preview of the Republican National Convention, which begins today in Milwaukee. Then the debate happened, followed by the feeding frenzy over whether Joe Biden should stay in the race. With that issue unresolved going into the start of the RNC, I thought I would write about how the two story lines were about to collide. Then came the assassination attempt at Saturday’s Trump rally in western Pennsylvania.
This campaign has been coming at us fast, even if every day since the debate has felt like a month.
In moments like this, when there is confusion and uncertainty, I like to step back and sort out what we know from what we do not.
Let’s start with what should be obvious. Political violence is wrong. Period. It solves nothing and should be condemned.
Unfortunately, this is not the same as saying political violence has had no place in American politics. Our political past is littered with violence. It’s why I feared an event like this would be the natural result of the incendiary nature of MAGA politics. It’s why I fear there will now be more violence.
Immediately after the shooting, some MAGA figures tried to capitalize politically by blaming it on the rhetoric of the left.
Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, who is widely reported to be on Trump’s vice presidential short list, tweeted, “The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”
South Carolina Senator Tim Scott echoed the sentiment: “For years, Democrats and their allies in the media have recklessly stoked fears, calling President Trump and other conservatives threats to democracy. Their inflammatory rhetoric puts lives at risk.”
This projection of blame by loyalists of a candidate who encouraged a violent insurrection and liberally uses violent rhetoric is an effort to shut down the discussion of what a second Trump term would bring while positioning Trump as the victim of his opponents’ words.
Claims like this sounded especially discordant on Sunday morning, when authorities revealed that the shooter was a white male registered Republican with an affinity for guns.
Absent a motive—and as of this writing we do not have one—the attack resembles so many other mass shootings which have become disturbingly commonplace in America. It was hard to avoid the dark irony of Democratic officials sincerely offering their thoughts and prayers to Trump and the other victims when usually they mock Republicans for using those words to stifle action on gun control.
So it may turn out that this was another all-too-familiar instance of a deeply disturbed person with a firearm who decided to attack a political rally instead of a different public gathering. Or it may turn out that the shooter did have a political motive despite being a Republican. We have to wait to learn more.
We also do not know what the political fallout will be. Assassination attempts can generate a short-lived period of sympathy for the victim, but the deep divisions in our politics coupled with the determination of MAGA Republicans to assign blame to their opponents is likely to blunt this effect.
One immediate consequence of the shooting is that—for the moment—it has put an end to the speculation about Biden’s future. The will-he-or-won’t-he-step-down questions had been starting to diminish following Biden’s well-received NATO press conference Thursday and his rousing Michigan rally the next day, but they had hardly disappeared. The Sunday talk shows were fertile ground for extending the press frenzy until shots rang out in Pennsylvania.
Those questions now look small compared to the stakes of what happened Saturday.
Since the assassination attempt, Biden has been able to play the role of comforter-in-chief, drawing on the innate compassion that is one of his greatest political strengths. He addressed the country from the Oval Office for just the third time in his presidency, a nod to the gravity of the moment, delivering an important message about the need for national unity that had the effect of elevating him above the intra-party bickering of previous two weeks.
He spoke of the need to “lower the temperature in our politics.”
A former president was shot, an American citizen killed, while simply exercising his freedom to support the candidate of his choosing. We cannot, we must not, go down this road in America.
As he works to heal the country, he also has the opportunity to begin to heal his tattered campaign.
The news agenda has changed with head-spinning force, pushing the Biden story to the back burner. With the RNC about to dominate the coming week, it’s not clear how much will be left to the story once the current crisis is over.
The shift in attention came at a fortuitous time for Biden, freezing out his detractors while he was on the upswing. A week could be long enough to take the wind out of the story while taking time off the clock that’s counting down toward nomination day.
Again, we have to wait and see.
We do have more clarity than we did a week ago on the extent of the fallout from the Biden feeding frenzy. The national public polling looks much like it did before the debate. In late June, the race was a dead heat, with some polls showing Biden up a couple of points, some polls tied, and some polls showing Trump up a couple of points—statistically the same result. That’s still the case.
Democrats who would replace Biden on the ticket might point to the fact that this isn’t a great result for the incumbent, but those who want to stay the course could note that Trump appears not to have benefitted from two of the worst weeks of Biden’s political career.
Of course, both these statements can be true. But it is noteworthy that the structure of the presidential contest appears to be locked in place, with very few voters open to changing their minds, even amidst all the chaos. Trump repeatedly bumps up against a ceiling in the mid-40s, while Biden has room to grow if he can consolidate the Democratic base.
That was the story before the debate and it is the story now. Whether it will still be the story after the dust settles on the assassination attempt and the RNC is to be determined.
I know we’ve been through a lot. We’re going to go through a lot more—there’s a long way to go before this election is resolved. With all the angst and drama of the past two weeks, the underlying stability of the race can be a source of comfort at moments like this when we’re drowning in crises.
We certainly need it.