Democrats in despair as Trump stands tall after assassination attempt and Biden mumbles
The assassination attempt on Donald Trump has left Democrats in despair but has ironically fortified Joe Biden’s candidacy as the party’s presidential nominee, after weeks of speculation he’d be forced out over concerns about his age and mental competence.
His mumbling and fumbling remarks from the Oval Office on Sunday (Monday AEST) are now the least of the Democratic Party’s worries.
No polls have emerged yet since the shocking attempt on the former president’s life but Democrat party strategists were near unanimous the crime could only help Mr Trump’s presidential campaign, casting him as a defiant martyr in images that will define the rest of his campaign.
“We’re so beyond f---ed,” one longtime Democratic insider told NBC on Sunday (Monday AEST), summing up the prevailing wisdom on the political fallout from a crime Republicans have been quick to blame on Democrat campaign rhetoric that has long cast Mr Trump as a dangerous threat to the nation.
For weeks at least Democrats have been robbed of their main line of attack against Trump, for fear of being accused of inciting political violence. “The presidential contest ended last night,” another Biden campaign operative said. Joe Biden’s attempts to ‘both sides’ the debate about political violence in his Oval Office remarks on Sunday night (Monday AEST) by harking back to January 6th will likely fall flat.
What’s more it’s hard to deny Trump handled himself magnificently under fire, and in his subsequent public statements, so much so numerous Democrat supporters on social media suggested nonsensically the attack must have been staged.
On the other hand, for the first time in months, talk of Joe Biden’s decline has been banished from the front pages. The flow of demands for him to stand aside has abruptly stopped.
And a curious thing happened in the hours after Trump was shot: Vice President Kamala Harris’s chance of being elected president in November suddenly halved according to the average of eight US political betting markets tracked by RealClear Politics, to 10 per cent.
The VP’s star had been in the ascendant for weeks amid speculation the party would have no choice but to convince the ageing Biden to stand aside. The president has had a horrible few weeks since the embarrassing debate plunged the ruling party into crisis, ahead of his series of lacklustre, gaffe-filled attempts to redeem himself.
If those Democratic strategists are right, why would anyone, Harris included, want the job to take on Trump and face near certain defeat? Joe Biden’s role perhaps would now be to take all the blame and shuffle off into the sunset after November, letting the party regroup and start afresh in 2028.
Those in the party who wanted Biden out will now have to wait weeks before they can renew their push to oust him, by which time it will be too late: the party’s nominating convention in Chicago is only a few weeks away.
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