Did Biden’s nomination just get saved as his chances of re-election remain doomed?
One Democratic strategist who has worked on multiple presidential campaigns and on Capitol Hill said that the physical targeting of Trump robs Biden of his main argument against the former president. Biden, the strategist pointed out, has tried to convince voters that Trump is so extreme that he presents a threat to democracy.
“That message is dead,” the strategist said, after a gunman tried to kill the presumptive nominee of one of the two major parties. The bullet that struck Trump “probably saved Biden’s nomination” by freezing Democratic calls for him to step aside and “doomed his re-election.”
Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, echoed that sentiment.
“I’m very concerned that the net effect of the Republican convention will be neutralizing the core democracy critique of Trump — a felon who fomented a violent insurrection, tried to block the peaceful transfer of power, and said the Constitution may need to be terminated,” he said.
“There is a race to define the democracy critique of Trump as legitimate,” Green added, “and we all need to make clear now that protecting democracy is the exact opposite of political violence.”
Most of those who questioned whether Trump would ultimately benefit politically from the attempt on his life — and his reaction to it — framed their own views as counterintuitive or at least at odds with the majority of Democrats in their circles. [Continue reading…]