After Trump shooting, rhetorical challenge for Democrats is bigger than ever

Since last weekend, President Joe Biden’s path to reelection has gotten even rockier. 

In polls, the race against Republican nominee Donald Trump remains close. But Saturday’s assassination attempt on the former president has reshaped the race in ways large and small – and potentially consequential. 

Security is tighter. Conspiracy theories abound. And words matter more than ever, as President Biden and other Democratic leaders call for national unity, while also highlighting what many party members see as a threat to democracy posed by a second Trump term. 

A day after the shooting at a Trump rally July 13 in Pennsylvania, Mr. Biden urged Americans from the Oval Office to “lower the temperature in our politics.” He has since said that his recent private comment to donors – made before the assassination attempt – about putting Mr. Trump “in the bull’s-eye” was a “mistake.” But President Biden’s sharp rhetoric has hardly abated. 

In speeches and interviews after the shooting, Mr. Biden still flags his rival’s rhetoric as highly problematic, including Mr. Trump’s 2023 comment that he’d “be a dictator” on Day 1, his denial of the 2020 election result, and his refusal to say he’ll “automatically” accept the outcome of the 2024 election.

The news late Wednesday that Mr. Biden has tested positive for COVID-19 only complicates his ability to communicate with the public. The president, on a trip in Las Vegas, will return to Delaware, “where he will self-isolate and will continue to carry out all of his duties fully during that time,” according to the White House, which described the symptoms as “mild.”

Biden critics see the president trying to have it both ways – denouncing Mr. Trump for inflammatory rhetoric while engaging in it himself. But some experts in political discourse say the two messages aren’t necessarily contradictory.

“You don’t have to say that Trump all of a sudden is a perfect candidate, and doesn’t pose a potential threat to the electoral system, in saying he also shouldn’t be a victim of a crime,” says Shana Kushner Gadarian, a political scientist at Syracuse University. 

Professor Gadarian also notes that the motive of the deceased shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, remains unknown, and it’s premature to say that he was driven to act by today’s inflamed public discourse. Even ubiquitous social media isn’t necessarily to blame, in a nation steeped in political violence since its founding.  

“Interpersonal conversation can both rile people up and also tamp things down,” Ms. Gadarian says. “That’s part of the importance of political leadership on both sides saying, ‘This is not how we do things.’”

Still, the stark reality is that Mr. Trump was almost assassinated. And with less than four months until Election Day, Mr. Biden and fellow Democrats face the challenge of not overinflaming public sentiment while also making clear that, in their view, the stakes in November could not be higher. 

The octogenarian Mr. Biden, too, remains under a cloud of doubt about his ability to win the election, given persistent questions about his mental acuity. The Trump shooting briefly paused that discussion, but it has resumed. The list of congressional Democrats voicing concerns, privately if not publicly, about the wisdom of nominating Mr. Biden has grown in recent days. 

On Wednesday, California Rep. Adam Schiff – a prominent Democrat favored to win a Senate seat in November – put out a statement calling on Mr. Biden to “pass the torch” and step aside from the race. And an Associated Press/NORC poll out Wednesday finds that nearly two-thirds of Democrats say Mr. Biden should withdraw from the race.

Many prominent Democrats are playing down the internal debate about Mr. Biden in favor of focusing on the perceived stakes of another Trump term. 

“Trump is the one saying he wants to be a dictator on Day 1,” says Ben Wikler, chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party. “He’s the one who called for the Constitution to be terminated.”

Mr. Wikler, whose state is hosting this week’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, is referring to a Trump social media post from 2022 that suggested the 2020 election results were “a massive fraud” that allowed for “termination” of the U.S. Constitution.

The Wisconsin Democratic chair also warns of a concept called Godwin’s law – the idea that, as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Adolf Hitler nears certainty. Indeed, he says, comparisons of Mr. Trump to World War II dictators and atrocities are increasingly frequent – and unhelpful.

“For Democrats, avoiding a kind of online chat-room dynamic and focusing on what actually persuades your audience is the most effective strategy,” says Mr. Wikler, whose state is one of the three most important election battlegrounds, along with Pennsylvania and Michigan.

Mr. Biden spent the opening days of the Republican National Convention in Las Vegas – in another battleground state, Nevada – doing outreach to Black and Latino voters and highlighting issues that matter to everyday Americans. In so doing, he has embraced left-leaning policies, including a proposal to cap annual rent increases to 5% and another to remove medical debt from credit reports.

One local Democratic official says that after the Trump assassination attempt, he thought, there’s “no way we’ll recover.” 

“He’ll get the sympathy vote,” Tick Segerblom, a member of the Clark County Commission, says of Mr. Trump. 

But after Mr. Trump picked Ohio Sen. JD Vance as his running mate, it was clear the former president was going all in on “Make America Great Again.” Mr. Segerblom says he realized, “We’re back 100% going for it.” 

“It will be like France,” he says, “when the left realized [hard-right leader Marine] Le Pen was going to win, and said, ‘We got to get going’” – and ended up blocking a far-right election victory.

Allen Shelton, a Las Vegas resident and real estate agent, calls Mr. Biden’s push for toned-down political rhetoric a “classy” move following the assassination attempt against Mr. Trump. 

“It shouldn’t be so divisive to where it comes to blows,” Mr. Shelton says at one of Mr. Biden’s campaign stops Tuesday in Las Vegas. “It doesn’t make sense.”