Saturday’s assassination attempt makes its target harder for Biden to beat.
Seconds after surviving an assassination attempt on Saturday evening, a bloodied Donald Trump told the Secret Service agents swarming round him to wait. According to one reporter within earshot he said “wait” four times.
So what? The agents obliged. Trump raised his fist and mouthed the words “fight, fight, fight”. In that moment he created an image that will define his third run for the White House, and could help define Biden’s fifth:
- Trump has emerged from the shooting at a Pennsylvania rally in a position of maximum strength.
- Joe Biden is probably now less likely to stand down as the Democratic candidate.
- That doesn’t change an election narrative that has become, on one level, a simple matter of perception: Trump strong, Biden weak.
Trump cuts a heroic figure, blood streaking his face, but still standing. It is an image of invincibility which, The New Yorker suggests, has echoes of the marines at Iwo Jima and Rocky Balboa dragging himself off the canvas to win the title.
Biden has spent two weeks looking fragile in the face of a growing chorus from his own supporters, convinced he is too old to run again.
Balm. Democrats from Biden to ex-President Obama said there was no place in America for political violence and all should condemn it.
Blame. Republicans were quick to apportion blame. JD Vance, the author-turned-populist senator who could become Trump’s running mate, said the Biden campaign’s central premise – that Trump was a fascist to be stopped at all costs – “led directly” to the attempted assassination.
Vance is right that Biden’s campaign has pitched the fight against Trump as a battle for the soul of America.
But it was Trump who took the political fight to the streets with his “Fight like hell” rallying cry to the January 6 insurrectionists after he lost at the ballot box and in the courts.
Next stop, Wisconsin. Trump will be centre stage at the Republican convention in Milwaukee this week. It’s not hard to anticipate his message: they tried to stop me in the courts, they tried to shoot me dead – and I’m still standing.
Pass the torch vs don’t you quit. Biden meanwhile faces calls to step down from 20 Democrats on Capitol Hill, a clutch of donors and celebrity backers including George Clooney. Yet he continues to insist he’s going nowhere, and the signs are that won’t change.
- The assassination attempt gives him a chance to say he can’t step down when political violence is in the air.
- Calls to replace him with Kamala Harris were already half-hearted and sound weaker now; it’s almost impossible to argue the Democrats would look stronger rushing forward with an untested candidate.
Fortunes reversed. Expect Trump to claim the moral high ground; a selfless hero putting everything on the line for America. Expect Democrats to be wary of provoking his supporters. They’ve already pulled attack ads and Biden has referred several times to his rival as Donald. It sounded odd, because it is – and it has the effect of humanising Trump. Biden has called him a rapist, a loser, a fraud, a threat to democracy. But Trump is a sympathy figure now.
What’s more… The conservative pollster Frank Luntz says the shooting could boost Republican turnout by a crucial percentage point – or two. He just became much more difficult to beat.
