Some Republicans claimed Donald Trump had won the presidential election as soon he raised a fist and mouthed “Fight, fight!” after a gunman’s bullet grazed his right ear at a rally at Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13. “President Trump survives this attack — he just won the election,” said Representative Derrick Van Orden (Republican-Wisconsin).
But the polls tell a different story. The Ipsos/ Reuters poll on July 15-16 showed Trump had a marginal lead among registered voters – 43% to 41% – over President Joe Biden, an advantage that was within the poll’s 3 percentage point margin of error, suggesting the attempt on Trump’s life had not sparked a major shift in voter sentiment. The July 15 Morning Consult poll showed an even closer race: Trump 46 per cent, Biden 45 per cent.
So what the politicians say and what the polls show don’t tally.
Doom and gloom
However, there has been doom and gloom in the Democratic camp since Biden’s disastrous debate with Trump on CNN on June 27 when questions were raised about his cognitive ability and fitness for office. Representative Adam Schiff of California said at a Democratic fund-raiser on Saturday (July 13) that the party would lose the Senate and fail to take the House if the president did not drop out of the race.
But Biden isn’t quitting. Instead, he is relying on a small inner circle of family members and loyalists for advice and information, and is increasingly out of touch with the rest of the country.
That’s what news reports say.
But all the breast-beating on the Democratic side and the jubilation in the Republican camp seem overdone compared with the close race recorded in the opinion polls.
Bernie Sanders blames the media
Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont blamed the media for the Biden controversy.
“The corporate media has obsessively focused on the June presidential debate and the cognitive capabilities of a man who has, perhaps, the most difficult and stressful job in the world. The media has frantically searched for every living human being who no longer supports the president or any neurologist who wants to appear on TV. Unfortunately, too many Democrats have joined that circular firing squad,” he wrote in the New York Times.
“Yes. I know: Mr. Biden is old, is prone to gaffes, walks stiffly and had a disastrous debate with Mr. Trump. But this I also know: A presidential election is not an entertainment contest. It does not begin or end with a 90-minute debate.”
And that is the essence of the issue.
Biden helped rebuild the economy after the Covid-19 pandemic, and poured money into rebuilding the infrastructure, as Sanders pointed out.
The president’s achievements have not been forgotten. He still has more than 40 per cent support.
Nevertheless, there are Democrats and their donors who fear a Republican landslide if Biden doesn’t drop out of the race.
Deep divisions
But their fears fly in the face of the deep divisions in America. The fact that the polls did not shift heavily in Trump’s favour even after he was shot at in the Pennsylvania rally shows how deep and seemingly insurmountable the divisions are.
The election will be decided in the seven swing states – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Their voters will determine who will be the next president – Biden or Trump — because all the other 43 states are either solidly Democratic or Republican.
Trump is currently leading in the polls, and he may be the eventual winner.
But his being shot at the Butler, Pennsylvania rally does not guarantee him victory in the November election, says an Atlantic article.
Politicians who lost after attempts on their lives
On the contrary, American presidents and presidential candidates have lost elections after assassination attempts.
The Atlantic article recalls:
“Theodore Roosevelt was shot in 1912 campaigning for president in Milwaukee and, with Paul Bunyan heroism, continued his speech after being struck; he still lost. “
Roosevelt lost to Woodrow Wilson.
The Atlantic article goes on to state: “ During a three-week span in 1975, two women tried and failed to shoot Gerald Ford. He lost his upcoming election, too. When Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981, a brief spike in his approval rating disappeared within a matter of months.”
If Trump is elected president, it won’t be just because he was a picture of courage under fire but for other reasons as well.
Biden also has a reservoir of support. Where his critics see an old man prone to gaffes, the party faithful will still vote for him as the Democratic Party standard bearer who rebuilt the economy after Covid-19.
Democrats vs Republicans
As Senator Bernie Sanders wrote supporting Biden in the New York Times: “This election offers a stark choice on issue after issue. If Mr. Biden and his supporters focus on these issues — and refuse to be divided and distracted — the president will rally working families to his side in the industrial Midwest swing states and elsewhere and win the November election. And let me say this as emphatically as I can: For the sake of our kids and future generations, he must win.”
On the opposing side, Nikki Haley endorsed Trump at the Republican convention. “I haven’t always agreed with President Trump. But we agree more often than we disagree. We agree on keeping America strong. We agree on keeping America safe. And we agree that Democrats have moved so far to the left that they’re putting our freedoms in danger.”
Both Democrats and Republicans assert the future is at stake in this election. Unfortunately, that’s the only thing they can agree on in the disunited state of America.
Democratic despair like Republican resignation in 2016
Strangely, a Republican pollster tells Biden supporters they shouldn’t give up hope.
Kristen Soltis Anderson points out that “the doomsday thinking of Democrats today is eerily similar to the resignation felt by many Republican elites in the wake of Mr. Trump’s nomination in 2016” — before Trump went on to be elected president.
“For better or worse, Mr. Biden seems to be taking a page out of Mr. Trump’s playbook, ignoring the detractors, criticizing the media, trying to gut it out, bad news cycle after bad news cycle through sheer determination not to lose,” she wrote in a New York Times essay on Tuesday (July 16).
“The best thing going for Mr. Biden is that he’s not Donald Trump. Even in the face of the historic events of the last few weeks, that fact remains. And that’s why, despite everything, I don’t think anyone should feel certain that the presidential election is all but a foregone conclusion,” she added.