Whom the Gods Would Destroy

By Noah Rothman

Monday, July 15, 2024

 

Democrats were depressed even before the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. The unsuccessful effort to gently nudge Joe Biden out of the presidential race had all but failed, and attempts by party stalwarts to convince themselves of the adroitness in the president’s halting, disjointed post-debate speaking engagements proved unsatisfying. By last week, donors and party elites alike found themselves publicly pining for Biden to have another senior moment so unambiguous it would deliver them from the purgatory to which the president’s debate performance had consigned his party. But if Democrats were in a gloomy mood before, they’re downright disconsolate today.

 

“We’re so beyond f—ed,” one “Democratic insider” told NBC News in the wake of the attempt on Trump’s life. “The presidential contest ended last night,” another Democratic consultant mused. The narrative focus of Joe Biden’s campaign, which rests on the notion that Trump is a unique threat to the American social compact because he and his movement are uniquely contemptuous of the country’s civic conventions, was defunct. “That message is dead,” an unnamed Democratic strategist confessed. “He was already on track to win,” a Democratic Senate aide said of Trump in remarks to Semafor, “and the fact that he is now a victim of political violence rather than the perpetrator undermines Biden’s core appeal.” A nimbler campaign might pivot to a stronger and more relevant line of attack against the former president once an appropriate period of silence had been observed, but Democratic partisans have concluded that the Biden campaign is a spent force. As one senior House Democrat confessed to Axios reporters, “We’ve all resigned ourselves to a second Trump presidency.”

 

It’s hard to fault Democrats who have succumbed to fatalism. How is the party to compete with the lore around the former president? Even before his bloodied and defiant visage was immortalized in that epoch-defining image, Trump’s capacity to extricate himself from political peril was already downright providential.

 

He has been impeached twice and acquitted twice. He was all but declared persona non grata by his own party following the events of January 6, only to come back from the political dead. He has been found liable for allegations of sexual assault and convicted of a federal crime, but he’s suffered no political consequences as a result. In the last month, as Democrats scrambled to secure their party’s future, Trump’s claims to presidential immunity were strengthened by the Supreme Court, which put the former president’s criminal sentencing off by several crucial weeks — perhaps even indefinitely. Today, the strongest of the criminal cases against Trump has been dismissed based on the notion that the special prosecutor’s appointment violates the separation of powers. And atop it all, Trump survived an assassin’s bullet in the most inspiringly theatrical way.

 

The former president’s opponents are fully justified in their hopelessness. If you’re disinclined to see Trump’s resilience as a function of the imprudence and ineptitude of his adversaries, as most Democrats likely are, what other explanations are available to you but something approaching the supernatural? Joe Biden’s party is justified in resigning itself before the awesome might of whatever forces are responsible for their psychological torment.

 

But the Democratic Party’s torture isn’t over yet. Not only has Donald Trump’s attempted murder put Democrats back on their heels, it has also arrested whatever momentum there was behind the effort to eject Biden from the presidential race. “The only positive thing to come out of last night for Democrats is we are no longer talking about Joe Biden’s age today,” one of the dejected Democratic consultants who spoke with NBC News confessed. Axios confirms that the attempt on Trump’s life has drained the dump-Biden movement of its enthusiasm. “I don’t think that’s the focus right now,” said one “Biden-skeptical Democrat” when asked for his thoughts on the president’s political fate. Pushing Biden off the ticket in November was always an uphill climb. But now, given Biden’s determination to power through this moment and the brief window the party has to replace him with a consensus candidate, it’s more likely than not that Biden will retain his party’s presidential nomination.

 

Who could blame Democrats for cowering before the near-cosmic confluence of events that have brought their party so low? It’s enough to make a person find religion.