Washington, DC – How does an assassination attempt transform a presidential race?
It’s a question American voters have had to ask themselves twice this election season, with Republican candidate and former President Donald Trump facing a new incident Sunday that the FBI called a serious incident. investigation as an attempted assassination attempt on his life.
This comes just two months after Trump survived shot by a gunman while he was on stage at a campaign rally.
A day after the latest attack, its implications are far from clear, but Trump’s response has been unequivocal. After a U.S. Secret Service agent shot the gunman at Trump’s Florida golf resort, the former president issued a defiant statement, vowing, “I will never surrender!” The sentiment echoed one he expressed moments after the July attack in Pennsylvania, in which a bloodied Trump raised his fist in the air, chanting “Fight, fight, fight.”
As in July, Trump on Monday again blamed the second attack on presidential candidate and US Vice President Kamala Harris, saying it was the result of Democrats’ “rhetoric” and “lies” that bullets are flying.
It’s a familiar response, according to James Davis, a Republican strategist, who said the Trump campaign likes to remind voters of the July attack, which Trump survived by millimeters.
“It reminds us of what a pivotal month July was and how important it was for so many people,” Davis told Al Jazeera.
That could turn out some key voters in key states, a potentially significant boost in an election that is expected to be decided by only a few thousand votes in key areas.
At the same time, Sunday’s incident so far appears to be eliciting a much more muted response than the July attack. That reflects how normal the threat of violence has become in a campaign where the vast majority of voters are deeply entrenched in their support for their party, Davis said.
“I’ve spoken to a number of people after the incident, and it’s almost as if people were expecting this. And it’s horrible,” he added. “The feeling in the air is not even one of shock. People are talking about it in a more reflective way.”
“No sympathy shock”
To be sure, Trump enjoyed a surge in political popularity after the July attack. Two days later, he triumphantly took the stage at the Republican National Convention in Wisconsin.
The attack transformed the event, with supporters in the audience wearing bandages that mimicked those worn by Trump after a bullet grazed his right ear. His campaign promised that his near-death experience would produce a less belligerent, more unifying candidate, though that promise has not been kept. never happened.
For some political analysts, the July attempt all but ensured Trump’s victory in November, as his opponent at the time, President Joe Biden, trailed badly in the polls after his election. disastrous performance in debate end of June.
But just a week after the shooting — before most quality polls on its effects could even be conducted — Biden dropped out of the race. Democrats rallied around Harris, who saw her support surge, largely offsetting Trump’s momentum.
Despite the extraordinary disruptions to the campaign trail over the summer, polls again showed the two candidates neck and neck. A recent New York Times/Siena College poll found a difference in support of just 1 percentage point in the key battleground states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina and Arizona.
Political strategist Rina Shah predicted that Trump would not experience a similar phenomenon this time around.
“This time there is no sympathy,” she told Al Jazeera. “That’s just the way it is. People have internalized what they believe.”
Shah said repeated evidence shows that unprecedented events have little effect on electoral dynamics in a political landscape that regularly expands into uncharted territory. She pointed to a series of dramatic political events, dating back to Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 vote and his criminal conviction earlier this year, as well as Biden’s unusual withdrawal from the race.
Add to that voters disillusioned with a political system dominated by the ardent bases of both parties – and the outsized influence of special interest groups – and she expects little to change after Sunday.
“People who are paying attention are completely indifferent to what’s happening,” Shah said. “There’s also a lot of apathy, because American representative democracy is broken.”
Tendency towards political violence
Of course, Sunday’s events are likely to cast a further shadow over the situation, although this could weigh more outside the political horse race.
The July attack has already had an impact account on how the Secret Service protects candidates and how candidates campaign safely. While the Secret Service has been praised for leave What could have been a much worse situation in Florida, these questions are likely to persist.
On Monday, Biden said the Secret Service “needs more help,” in his first public comment calling for more resources for the agency.
“And I think Congress should respond to their needs,” he said.
For his part, Trump has continued his campaign after the July attack, albeit with bulletproof glass and sight-blocking barriers now a fixture at his rallies. His campaign has not indicated plans to cancel upcoming events, including an in-person rally in Flint, Michigan, on Tuesday.
Michael Fauntroy, founding director of the Race, Politics, and Policy Center at George Mason University, said he expected little introspection within the political establishment after the latest incident.
Fauntroy described the event as the logical conclusion of political strategies aimed at demonizing opponents that Trump helped encourage, creating a powder keg in a country with such easy access to weapons.
“It’s just a consistent trend of America moving toward political violence,” he said. “Nobody can be surprised by that.”
Fauntroy pointed the finger at former President Barack Obama, about whom Trump spread racist rumors at the birth of his child. conspiracy theories Early in his political career, Obama received three times as many threats as previous presidents. According to a 2014 Washington Post report, Obama received three times as many threats as previous presidents.
