A state of uncertainty

Republicans feel momentum. Democrats need to turn change into opportunity.

I don’t know what to say about what occurred this weekend that hasn’t been said, so I’m just going to ramble a bit. The race for president has changed dramatically in two weeks, bookended by a disastrous debate performance and an attempted assassination. I’ve followed a lot of the responses to both events and the news surrounding them on social media. I’ve also spent a fair bit of time talking to people in person who come from a variety of perspectives.

I worry that the race is going to be reshaped by two starkly contrasting images burned into the American psyche. The first is of a President of the United States unable to gather his thoughts and appearing befuddled in front of an audience of 51 million viewers and many millions more watching snippets on social media. The other is an iconic photo of a defiant, bloodied former president pumping his fist in the air shouting “Fight!” moments after an assassin attempted to end his life. The contrast is almost too perfect to believe that we won’t see it over and over again in the coming months.

Maybe, though, the power of the second image will erase memories of the first, offering the president a reset. Biden has certainly used the moment to appear presidential, putting his country before his campaign. He pulled down his ads. He called Trump. He made a speech from the Oval Office, calling for calm and urging partisans to pull back from the brink. The question is how the public will respond.

Before Saturday’s shooting, Democrats on social media were getting vicious in their arguments about whether to find a new candidate or stick with Biden. After the assassination attempt, the debate seems to have fizzled. With the GOP convention this week, the argument will likely be overshadowed. The convention coverage will either give the Democrats the space to have a conversation with less public scrutiny or it will kill it altogether.

I want to make a few points about the debate about Biden’s candidacy. First, concerns about Biden’s viability are not rooted in elites who don’t like Biden’s blue collar heritage. Since last fall, polling has indicated that a plurality of Democrats would prefer another candidate. Post debate, the number has grown considerably. That’s not to say that those Democrats won’t stick with Biden this fall, but it’s pretty solid evidence that the “elites” narrative is false.

On Friday evening, I sat down with a group of people who work in the service industry. Most did not have college degrees. All of them watched the debate and all think Biden needs to be replaced on the ticket. That evidence may be anecdotal, but it does indicate that the calls for Biden’s replacement are not rooted mostly in insider power circles.

Another theme that took root among Democrats in the aftermath of the debate and before the shooting is that polls showed the debate didn’t matter. A poll commissioned by NPR and PBS showed the race static with Biden leading by two. The pro-keep-Biden faction derided those calling for change. One person wrote on Threads, “I have never seen a political party more adept at completely soiling itself over nothing.”

The whole point of having the debate four months before the election was to change the dynamic race. The Biden camp wanted to put to rest concerns about his age and contrast him with a blustery and unhinged Trump. They have not been able to shake Trump despite his convictions and legal problems. In June, before the debate, the Biden campaign and its allies spent more than $60 million on ads that were virtually unanswered by the GOP and failed to move the needle. Trump is still leading in every swing state and Biden’s two-point lead is far short of where he’ll need to be to win the electoral college.

The debate was supposed to give Biden the boost he needed before the conventions. It didn’t happen. The campaign’s logic for the debate wasn’t flawed. They still need to do something to shake up the race because the status quo does not bode well for Democrats in November. They can either try to force something or hope that an external event, or events, changes perceptions. Assuming that Biden is going to somehow catch Trump down the stretch doesn’t seem like much of a strategy, especially since his message does not seem to be resonating—or it’s not getting through.

Partisan reaction to the assassination attempt on both sides was absurd. Republican activists blaming Democratic rhetoric ignore that people like Marjorie Taylor Greene has been out there almost everyday for years calling for killing Democrats. In North Carolina, the GOP gubernatorial nominee Mark Robinson told a church, “Some people just need killing.” Their Superintendent of Public Instruction nominee called for public executions of Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and Roy Cooper.

Despite all these calls for violence, I didn’t hear any Republicans offering caution when Nancy Pelosi’s husband was attacked. Or when a California man was arrested with a “kill list” and an assault weapon on his way to Washington. Or when a Missouri man crashed into a White House barrier declaring he was there to kill Biden and take power. No, Republicans are showing their selective outrage.

Also, the shooter wasn’t some leftist. He appears to have been a registered Republican who was just deranged. We might need to tone down the rhetoric but Democrats didn’t likely incite that guy.

Left-wing activist looking for some sort of conspiracy, believing the assassination attempt was faked are ridiculous. Those arguing whether Trump got hit by a bullet or by a piece of glass have missed the whole point. And those deriding his fist pump as staged don’t understand the power of images.

Finally, people working for the Biden campaign who think he’s going to lose need to either shut up or quit. You don’t throw the campaign you’re serving under the bus. You don’t leak to reporters damaging information. If you work for the campaign and just need the job, then keep it to yourself. Campaigns are stressful enough without people in them fueling distrust among their peers.

We’re in a state of uncertainty right now. The campaign for the presidency is changing. Republicans are feeling like they’ve got the momentum. Democrats need to figure out how turn the change into opportunity. We’ll know a lot more on the other side of these two conventions.