So the last week we had Donald Trump almost being assassinated at a rally and I wrote about how the news seems to be on steroids of late, that it seems almost every day we’re hit with one “unprecedented” event after another to the point of being numb about the whole thing.
Case in point: The assassination attempt against Trump seems like distant, distant old news now and hasn’t seemed to alter the fabric of our body politic much at all.
To be clear, there are those Trump fans who did make something of what should have been a ground shattering event. They talked about how Trump was “invincible” or somehow “anointed”… in a religious sense. There were T-shirts showing the bloodied Trump being held by the Secret Service and… welp, I cannot deny his fans their moment of hero worship even if to me the whole thing was incredibly frightening.
Then the Republican Convention came. In short order Trump chooses author and very far right (and favorite of billionaires like Peter Thiel) J. D. Vance as his Vice President pick… and it doesn’t really do all that much to anyone outside the right wing sphere. In fact, many pundits wound up scratching their heads at the choice. Most of the time a VP pick is meant to shore up a Presidential Candidate’s weakness. Like getting a popular figure from a State that’s in play or choosing someone who will help you with some large segment of the population which may not view you in as positive a light. Vance didn’t seem to “help” Trump with broadening his base and came from a state that likely will go Republican already. An odd choice, for sure.
But even worse for Trump, the convention’s finale featured his acceptance speech and… it didn’t go all that well. To begin, it was the longest acceptance speech ever at 92 minutes and that wouldn’t have been an issue except that most viewed the speech as a too long and boring rambling affair. Even the audience seemed to want it to end and that’s hardly a ringing endorsement to the guy you want to lead not only your party but the nation itself.
And there’s more: Trump claimed he would offer a “unifying” speech and truthfully if there was a time to do something like that, after surviving an assassination attempt as he did, this would have been the time for a more humble Trump to come on stage and accept the nomination and ask those who are disinclined to voting for him to give him a chance. That he’s a changed man and would fight for all Americans rather than the hard right few.
Didn’t happen.
So Trump exits the Convention not looking particularly stronger than before he entered and that, in itself, should be looked upon as at best a missed opportunity and at worse a failure.
A few days later comes the (here’s that word again) unprecedented news that President Joe Biden has decided not to run for re-election. He formally endorses his V.P., Kamala Harris, to succeed him.
It’s a crisis point. Will the Democratic Party descend into chaos? Would several others try to claim the nomination from Biden/Harris?
Nope.
What happened was quite the opposite: It energized the Democratic Party. It led to an incredible monetary haul of donations, perhaps the biggest ever in a single day. And it excited many who may have been holding their breaths with a Biden candidacy.
I was one of those holding my breath, I have to admit.
Look, I don’t dislike Biden at all and I’d vote for him over Trump or pretty much any of the current batch of right wing Republicans out there.
But, let’s face it, at 81 years of age, he’s very old and as a potential voter, I couldn’t help but wonder day after day if we’d get the “good” Biden or the tired older Biden we saw in that first debate with Trump.
The idea of another Trump presidency was unimaginable to me but the reality was that I didn’t know if Biden, a mere three years older than Trump, could show more energy despite his age.
In one swoop, though, the tables turned completely. Suddenly the Democratic Party has a young, energetic, and smart woman looking like she will be the candidate and just as suddenly all the stuff that was being leveled against Biden -that he was too old and too tired looking- was wiped out and re-focused on… Trump.
It’s been a few days now since these events and it feels like the Democratic Party remains on a high while the Republican Party is struggling to find a new message. Worse, their biggest televised event, the Convention, came and went and did nothing to broaden Trump’s appeal while they spent all that time slamming Biden… who is no longer even the candidate they’re running against!
It’s a truly fascinating bit of political ju-jitsu by Biden.
He may be old and I feel he was smart to give up a re-election run. Yet he managed to do so in perhaps the best possible way to re-energize his party and focus a harsh light on the fact that all his problems… are present in spades in Trump.
But again… that’s today.
Let’s see what happens tomorrow. And the day after tomorrow…