The day after the assassination attempt targeting Donald Trump, Sen. John Fetterman told CNN: “It’s shocking and it’s a dark day for our nation. … I’m just so glad Donald Trump is going to be OK.” The Pennsylvania Democrat added, “This isn’t an opportunity for politics or strategy or how this is going to play out.”
The senator’s comments seemed more than fair under the terrible circumstances, but it appears at least one House Republican couldn’t quite help himself. Politico reported:
Congressional Republicans already believed Donald Trump was headed back to the White House. Some of them think the Saturday night rally shooting has made his path even easier. “President Trump survives this attack — he just won the election,” Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.) told POLITICO in a brief interview shortly after the shooting.
The Wisconsin congressman might very well be right. Trump was well positioned before his recent debate with President Joe Biden, and his odds of success improved after the incumbent’s poor performance. What’s more, the Republican National Convention is poised to get underway in Milwaukee, and it’s quite common for candidates to get a bump after accepting their party’s nomination.
The combination of factors — Trump’s existing lead, the convention, public sympathy in the wake of the shooting, et al. — makes it very easy to believe that he will soon be in an even stronger electoral position in the near future.
But recent history suggests some caution is in order.
For one thing, there have been plenty of moments, especially in the Trump era, in which the conventional wisdom was shaped by “this changes everything” commentary, only to discover that the developments did very little to change public attitudes.
To be sure, an attempted assassination might be a qualitatively different kind of incident — or it might not. Time will tell, and those making assumptions should probably approach the question with a bit more humility.
There’s also some precedent to draw upon. The attempt on Trump’s life deserves to be condemned in the strongest possible terms, but it’s not the first time something like this has happened in the United States. In 1975, for example, would-be assassins targeted President Gerald Ford more than once, and he nevertheless lost his re-election bid a year later. Six years later, President Ronald Reagan was nearly killed, and while he saw a brief bump in the polls, it did not last. Perhaps most notably, in 1912, Theodore Roosevelt was mounting a comeback bid when he was shot in the chest before delivering a speech in Milwaukee. (The former president went ahead and delivered the speech before going to the hospital.) A month later, Roosevelt nevertheless fell far short in the multi-candidate race, winning just six states. The point is, we’ll be hearing plenty of predictions about the electoral impact of Saturday’s shooting, but they should be taken with a grain of salt.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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