When the bullet went through donald trumpthe ear saturday evening, democrats in washington let out a collective cry to heaven. After two weeks of saving each other and their own candidate, Joe Biden, for the Atlanta debate bombing, Trump had just become a living martyr, with iconic photos to boot. If he appeared to be on his way to victory before Saturday, the shooter appeared to have made the election anything but a formality. “It's the worst thing that could have happened,” a senior Biden campaign source told me Saturday night.
And yet this whole near-tragedy may have been great news for Biden himself, politically speaking. Over the weekend, all the talk in Washington had been about how simply the 81-year-old president it had stand aside for the sake of the republic. Two Democratic members of Congress I spoke with were certain that Biden was not seeing the polls for what they were, and that Biden's closest advisers…Steve Ricchetti, Anita Dunn, et al.—they protected him from an overdue date with reality.
“It's not moving forward, Mr. President,” Crow said, “for our voters.”
“You should talk about it!” Biden responded and again listed his accomplishments. “On national security, no one he has been a better president than me. name me Put me one! So I don't want to hear that shit!”
“How is this sustainable?” the source of the campaign had asked me on Friday. “We're in a perfect shitstorm until he resigns or everyone gets back on board.” Democrats are neither here nor there, all in and all out, neither fully supporting their candidate nor leaving him out, a situation perfectly summed up by a Russian expression: a thrush caught in a whirlwind.
But Saturday's “events” in Pennsylvania, as they are known in Washington, at least temporarily ended the talks that Biden could put aside. “Biden's replacement talk? That's over,” said a source close to the administration. “I think the assassination attempt took the pressure off for a critical 72 hours. Also, the hill never got going, and death by 270 cuts doesn't work.”
More swirls, more swirls
How long is four months, exactly? There are 111 days left until the presidential election, but is that too much or too little time? Right now, Democrats are hoping it's both enough time to unify the party and let Trump do some inevitable damage to its prospects. But, if Biden remains the nominee, as is very likely, no so much moment Biden could have another disastrous senior moment at the height of the debate. “I don't buy it, it's still too early,” said a source close to Democratic leadership of the fatalism in Democratic circles that Biden's loss is a foregone conclusion. “The debate, the assassination attempt, and the failed Democratic takedown all happened over the last few weeks. We've got four long months ahead of us that promise to be even crazier.” The source noted that Biden is still neck-and-neck with Trump in several battleground states, and speculated that the assassination attempt “isn't going to move the moderates and the Bush Republicans, the people who really need it. The crazies of the right that this is going to go to vote for it anyway.”
Bidenites point out that four months is enough time for the contrast between the two men to become clearer to voters, who will be forced to go out and vote for Biden, and against Trump. “The only hope is that there will be plenty of time for several larger, unexpected events to occur, and they almost certainly will,” the campaign source said.
It's a hope many Democrats cling to. In four months, Trump could self-destruct by doing or saying something completely insane, even though he's said and done more than enough over the past decade and it never seems to matter. And so they recognize that not all these great and unexpected events will cut in their favor. There is a definite possibility, the campaign source said, “that they will all be mean to us.” Another faltering public performance, for example, or a health incident could prove fatal to the campaign.
For now, though, the hand-wringing has subsided, at least in public, and Biden appears to have emerged unscathed. “It feels like this at the moment, without any public merger,” said one Democrat on the Hill. “Until the actual delegate count is done, there will be whispers, stories, etc. It's hushed up now, but we've got a few more weeks before done done.”
But it's not over yet, and as the Hill source suggested, the whispers haven't stopped, even if Biden has made it clear he's going to put it out there. “He also said he would step down if he saw data that said he can't win,” the campaign source said. “It's about to see a lot of this The next round of polls will probably be apocalyptic.”
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