Trump shooting underscores the volatility and violence of modern American politics
Fears this year's US presidential campaign could turn violent have been realised and the 2024 Presidential campaign will forever be changed. Whether Biden runs is quite possibly irrelevant now.
This year was always going to be a wild, volatile, year in American politics. We’ve just had confirmation of just how extreme things could get.
I don’t think the events of this weekend have quite sunk in yet. Someone tried to kill Donald Trump. It was an assassination attempt on someone who is both a former US President and a major party contender to become the next US President.
My first post to The Donkey Vote was an expression of the ubiquitous dread that is being felt by so many about the possible outcomes of the US Presidential election. The shooting in Pennsylvania this weekend underscores the broad scope of possibilities that could play out in the United States this year and into the next.
Further political violence is a very real danger and it’s not fearmongering to say so. Much of the immediate reaction to the attempted shooting of Donald Trump has been an expression of shock, but not surprise. It has been an acknowledgment that an increasingly extreme political rhetoric meant that such a violent development was becoming an inevitability.
The response from political leaders has been quick and bi-partisan in their condemnation of the attack. Thankfully, Trump was not more seriously injured or killed. Tragically, at least one spectator at the rally was killed - including a former chief volunteer firefighter, Corey Comperatore.
Political violence obviously has no place in any peaceful democratic system. It particularly needs to be quashed with urgency in an environment that features a fractured populace now notably prone to embracing a wide range of conspiracy theories and one could potentially foster follow-up attacks.
We don’t know much about the shooter or his motives at this stage. But it appears confirmed that it was a 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania - whose history is now the subject of an FBI investigation.
Trump has long painted himself as a persecuted political candidate. Someone from whom the 2020 election was stolen, who has been the target of “politically motivated” criminal prosecutions. He has told his supporters that an unspecified “they” are coming for you, and he is their protector.
While much of what has transpired since the 2020 election has been a legitimate upholding of the law, Trump is now someone who has been the target of a very real threat to his life, during a very public political rally.
Trump can now - with some legitimacy - say that people are trying to kill him to prevent him from re-taking the presidency. Reagan enjoyed a 10-point boost to his approval rating in the wake of his own attempted assassination. But I don’t think it makes sense to assume things will play out the same way in 2024. It will take a bit of time to fully understand where things land for Trump and the broader presidential contest, but it is clear that he will use it as an opportunity to paint himself as a strong, brave, candidate who faced an assassination attempt and continued undeterred.
The shooting occurred in the weekend before the Republican National Convention, which Trump will attend in Milwaukee this week. Get ready to see a lot of Associated Press photographer Evan Vucci’s astonishing images, of a bloodied Trump, flanked by Secret Security, fist in the air, with the American Flag flying in the background.
As flawed as Trump’s rhetorical image may be - given his history of criminal behaviour - it will allow Trump to contrast himself against his opponent, President Joe Biden, whose physical and mental abilities had until this weekend, been the dominant story of the campaign.
The problem for Biden
The original draft of this post was going to be an analysis of the state of the Joe Biden campaign - following his pretty poor showing in the first televised debate, and the critical NATO conference and dialogues with key international allies.
The challenge that Joe Biden now needs to negotiate is that his campaign - and his presidency - has fallen into a political crisis death spiral that is usually inescapable, where his core flaws have become the dominant focus of the media’s coverage of his campaign. Flaws that are constantly being reaffirmed each time he appears publicly, sending him deeper into the spiral.
We’ve seen the dynamic play out in Australian politics. Tony Abbott’s term as prime minister ended after he was unable to shake a reputation for being harsh and out of touch with the Australian public. Ultimately confirmed by the bizarre decision to issue an Australian Knighthood to Prince Philip. Scott Morrison lost the 2022 election after it became widely held that he was chronically dishonest - a reputation that was cemented for perpetuity after losing government when it came to light that he had secretly appointed himself to multiple additional ministerial portfolios.
The prevailing narrative about the Biden campaign is that he is losing his mental sharpness, which could prevent him from serving another four years as a fully effective President. In fairness to Biden, he appears to be on top of his brief, and the key policies that his administration is pursuing both domestically and internationally. For the most part, he demonstrated this during the NATO conference.
However, it is objectively true that Biden is showing his age. Biden is - by some margin - the oldest president ever to have inhabited the White House. The second oldest president, Ronald Reagan, was 77 when he ended his second term. Biden would be 82 at the start of his.
Biden is forgetting or confusing names and it often derails his train of thought at crucial moments. This is being interpreted as a sign that he is no longer fully fit to be President by both his peers and key Democratic Party figures, but also by voters.
The last few months have included developments that should have proven Earth-shattering for any normal set of Presidential candidates. But Donald Trump operates on a different plane to what would ordinarily trouble political aspirants - but he has a way of avoiding the political crisis death spiral. For example, Trump’s guilty verdicts in the hush money trial barely troubled polls, and potentially fortified his support.
The same can’t be said for Biden. His poor performance in the first debate had a notable impact on polls - gifting a 2 or 3-point gain to Donald Trump.
The problem for Biden is that the prevailing narrative about his fitness for office has been, and will continue to be, reinforced at future public events. When he misspoke and referred to Kalama Harris as ‘Vice President Trump’, or introduced Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as ‘President Putin’ during the NATO press conference, the narrative was reaffirmed. There will be more events like this during the rest of the presidential campaign.
Biden needed to find a way to reorient the campaign narrative to focus on the deep fundamental flaws and dangers of Donald Trump. Trump, just six weeks ago, was found guilty of 34 criminal counts of falsifying business records. Trump has been charged with additional offences relating to attempts to overturn the 2020 Presidential election result. These acts should disqualify Trump from being President - but he currently commands a 2-point lead in national polls, and that’s before any potential impact from the assassination attempt.
In the wake of this weekend’s shooting, Biden’s window of opportunity to change the narrative of the campaign is potentially closed. Trump will dominate the news cycle for weeks - because that is what an assassination attempt on a past and potentially future president dictates, but also because he will use recent events to sell his image as a persecuted radical.
Whether Biden drops out now is almost irrelevant. The challenge for the Democrats is that they need, somehow, to find a way to regain control of the narrative and convince voters that despite being shot at, Donald Trump remains an unfit person for the presidency.