Democrats are pushing back against a feeling of fatalism within the party, insisting Donald Trump’s newfound vigor and status as a martyr do not mean the election is over.
Asked whether Trump’s victory was as inevitable as some pundits and prominent social media figures have been suggesting, top Democratic strategist Cornell Belcher fumed to the Daily Beast in an email, “The premise is absurd. The only thing inevitable is the absurdity of how we continue to cover this race.”
He added that a candidate who “has a roughly 46/47 percent ceiling,” as Trump does with the general electorate, is nothing if not precariously balanced on the edge of defeat.
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Still, Trump heads into the Republican National Convention in arguably the strongest position of his career. The instantly iconic photograph of the bloodied former president raising his fist after a failed assassination attempt in Butler, Pa., is the kind of powerful imagery no amount of political consulting can buy.
President Joe Biden’s faltering performance at last month’s presidential debate already had Democrats despondent about their chances. Now, plenty of them have given up. “We've all resigned ourselves to a second Trump presidency,” one House Democrat told Axios over the weekend.
The Biden campaign and other leading Democrats didn’t get the memo. Trump is strong, they say, but he’s not invincible. What’s more, they believe that after the Milwaukee convention ends, memories of that harrowing moment in western Pennsylvania will begin to fade.
“Everyone and their aunt knows this really kicks off post Labor Day,” Max Rose, a former U.S. Representative from New York, told the Daily Beast.
They are realistic about the fresh headwinds the incumbent president faces. But they also believe the political ramifications of Saturday’s attempt on the former president’s life are being overstated—and will fade.
If the assassination attempt reminded Americans of the need to tone down inflammatory political rhetoric, they will inevitably flock to Biden, the campaign believes. They will remember that it was Biden who had entered the presidential race in 2020 to fight for the “soul of the nation.” And they will see in Trump’s pick of the hardliner Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio as his vice presidential nominee fresh evidence that his own pleas for unity were empty to begin with.
So even though the Saturday attack was on Trump, it was also an assault on the values that Biden is better equipped to defend.
“People also understand that the convention will naturally shift focus away from Dems,” Rose said. The RNC will, naturally enough, celebrate Trump, who even before surviving an assassination attempt had taken on an outsized, mythical personality for some on the right.
Nor will the Biden campaign hold back for much longer. “The DNC and the campaign will continue drawing the contrast between our positive vision for the future and Trump and Republicans’ backwards-looking agenda over the course of the week,” a campaign official said, indicating that attacks on the Republican ticket would resume on Tuesday, the second day of the convention.
David Axelrod, the veteran Democratic strategist who mastermind Barack Obama’s political ascent who has expressed grave doubts about Biden’s ability to defeat Trump in November, offered a much more measured view.
“No one is invincible in a closely divided country. But that Trump is now in a very strong position relative to Biden would be hard to deny. He is ahead in every battleground state and has expanded it to four states that had been thought safe for Democrats. He arrives at his convention as an enlarged figure after the assassination attempt,” he wrote in a text message to the Daily Beast.
“The president is still trying to reassure Democrats and the country after the debate,” Axelrod went on to say. “His challenges are clear and many.”
