It’s hard to overstate how much Donald Trump’s near-death experience last week at the hands of a would-be assassin has upended US politics, fuelling the impression the former president has become unstoppable in his race to reclaim the White House.
Trump was already ahead of Joe Biden in most opinion polls before the assassination attempt in Pennsylvania, but his poise under fire has bestowed a martyr-like status on the Republican presidential nominee – at least among the party’s base, which can unify his supporters and probably attract new ones.
It already looks as though Trump is running the show. Biden agreed to provide independent presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy with Secret Service protection this week just a few hours after Trump demanded it.
The former president’s power within the Republican Party has been supercharged as much as it has outside it, clearly illustrated on Tuesday (Wednesday AEST) when his former bitter competitor Nikki Haley, who only months ago indicated she might not vote for Trump, gave him a ringing endorsement on the stage at the convention in Milwaukee.
So did Trump’s other former rival for the GOP nomination, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
It’s Trump’s Republican Party now more than it ever has been, and it will likely remain so for many years into the future.
Until the weekend’s historic murder attempt, Trump had been reportedly torn between picking a more traditional Republican as his running mate, such as North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum or Florida senator Marco Rubio, as a way to unify a party polarised after the primaries. He was counselled to pick a woman to try to win over college-educated female voters, the demographic among whom he polls worst.
But after his unexpected political elevation he’s opted for JD Vance, a young MAGA firebrand more associated with Trump’s brand and politics than any other potential candidate. He has set up the eloquent, 39-year-old senator to run for president in 2028 – much as Dwight Eisenhower once did by choosing a young Richard Nixon as his running mate in 1952 – ensuring MAGA values around economic populism and foreign policy isolationism last well beyond any second Trump term.
Valid questions about the competence of the Secret Service in keeping the former president safe – the gunman was able to fire three shots from a nearby rooftop before he was “neutralised” – have played into MAGA talking points about the competence and impartiality of federal law enforcement agencies.
Democrats nervously awaiting fresh polling data since the weekend’s shocking attempt on the former president’s life at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, would already have noticed Trump’s chance of winning a second term had shot up to 66 per cent from 56 per cent, the highest yet, according to RealClear Politics’ average of eight political betting markets.
Many Republican and Democratic strategists alike have now written off Biden’s chances in November. His candidacy had already been severely hobbled by his own declining competence, illustrated by endless gaffes and incoherent mumbling in his public appearances. “The landslide will be even bigger now,” veteran Trump critic Andrew Sullivan wrote on his widely read blog – even if Biden is ultimately pushed out, a scenario that has become less likely given fewer top Democrats would want to take on a resurgent Trump and lose.
Democrats have had to dial down their rhetoric against Trump, at least for a time, and pull their campaign ads as they assess the political fallout of the first assassination attempt on a current or former president since 1981.
Trump’s own convention speech on Thursday night (Friday AEST) will be revealing: will he opt for a new, unifying message to the nation, dumping his trademark dark brooding on America’s alleged terminal decline under Democrat rule? Democrats will be hoping his near-death experience doesn’t change his political style, but Trump’s more disciplined campaigning and speaking, in evidence at least since he thrashed Biden in June’s first presidential debate, suggest they could be in for a disappointment.
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