Yeah I keep seeing this reaction, but it’s wholly at odds with the history of these things.
The bump Reagan got was short lived and that was the exception to the rule. TR, George Wallace, Gerald Ford all survived attacks but did not win their races.
People who are assuring us that this means Trump is going to win are clearly unfamiliar with the deeply weird lore of this country's THREE mid-seventies presidential-candidate assassination attempts.
We don't know yet that the shooter was politically left.
Not that the shooter being a Republican would change anything in the mind of that particular cult.
Yeah, it won't matter if it was a Qanon dude with greivances or an actual anarchist. Any information contrary to their beliefs will be ignored, they want the green light to do violence.
It did occur to me that the combination of testimony about Trump assaulting a child and QAnon's focus on pedophilia could create a volatile combination.
Trump is going to respond to this by becoming even more unhinged. He will call for violence, openly, gleefully.
What we don't know: how the majority of Americans will react to the frontrunner for president demanding the murder of his opponents. I fear it's not going to be how we'd prefer, though.
I hear you but as far as I’m aware Gerald Ford didn’t have a batshit insane cult of personality who had already ransacked the Capitol before the attempts
That’s the point — there were real swing voters who could be moved in that era, unlike the small slice today.
The MAGA cult will certainly get crazier, but their increased anger doesn’t add a single vote and might just alienate some of the small set they need to read.
Those of us who know what a Trump presidency would entail are all prone to panic at this point. It's been driving the "Biden is old" panic, and it will drive this one too.
Yeah, the instinct to panic is, I think, comes from fear of Trump winning and the uncertainty surrounding his chances.
It's incredibly high risk and people can't assess the likelihood. So there's a tendency to assume the worst if only to (in theory) prepare for it being real.
All I would imagine this does is (a) harden the already hardened MAGA types, and (b) make liberals far more worried and engaged in the outcome of this election.
My optimistic prediction: many voters will associate the attempt with general chaos/instability. And most voters don't want a president connected to such things.
The biggest thing that people need to remember is that 1984 wasn't that much of an improvement for Reagan over 1980. He was an INCREDIBLY popular incumbent with bipartisan appeal (Remember Reagan Democrats?), so it's a bit reductive to say that the 1984 landslide was all down to the sympathy vote.
Whenever something bad happens, a bad debate or an assassination attempt, dems freak out and act like all that's left is the we-lose-the-election montage. It's exhausting. Does it make you want to vote for him? No? Does it make you want to not vote? No? Then relax. That's how it is for everyone.
Nobody knows (outside of secret service maybe) who the shooter was, their motive, if they were even intentionally aiming towards Trump. It could have been an argument between two Trump supporters and a stray shot grazed Trump. Nobody knows and I don't this generating sympathy from non-supporters.
It’s definitely part of this mania where people are convinced that anything that happens to Trump, whether good or bad, helps him.
If Biden had barely scraped past a shooting the calls for him to drop out wound just intensify and we’d be told it was a disaster for him.
Pretty likely IMO all the howls for blood and threats of retribution from Trump and his minions -- especially at the RNC -- will absolutely horrify everyone and flatten whatever bump of sympathy he's getting right now.
