We’re literally a turn of the head at the last split second away from a 20-year-old kid with no military training having fired the first shot in World War III, as you may have already realized.
Which puts into perspective that, this time yesterday, the talk of the 2024 presidential race was about whether or not Joe Biden was going to drop out.
All that talk about Biden having a bad night at a TV debate seems trite now.
We have actual bullets flying, actual bloodshed – a person attending a campaign rally shot dead, two others seriously wounded.
Not surprisingly, it didn’t take long for some Republican politicians – we see you, JD Vance, Tim Scott, Lauren Boebert – to try to pin the blame for what happened yesterday on Democrats.
That will happen when you give politicians a microphone.
Some folks will never know shame.
Of note here, though, is that Donald Trump, himself, seems, for the moment, anyway, to be displaying some sense of how volatile the moment is, issuing a statement emphasizing the need to “stand United,” not surprising, given that he has to realize how lucky he is to be alive.
The Biden campaign, for its part, moved quickly to take down its TV advertising, itself bowing to the moment, out of a sense of realization of how it would look to be politicking after a lone-wolf gunman had just tried to shoot his rival out of the race.
Aside from the handful of attention-seekers among elected Republicans, two of whom are vying to be Trump’s VP pick, most folks from both sides of the aisle are pledging to tone it down, though we already know how long this Sept. 12, 2001, moment will last.
Trump is scheduled to speak on Thursday, thus, the over-under on this brief period of national unity is, yep, Thursday.
How ugly things get from here depends on the tone.
If Trump and Republicans make the theme of the campaign pinning blame on Biden or the Deep State for what happened yesterday, all bets are off as to how this plays out over the next four months.
The 2024 election isn’t just a presidential race; there are races ongoing across the country in the U.S. House, the U.S. Senate, in addition to how there are state races, local races.
A 20-year-old kid with who taught himself to be an assassin watching videos on YouTube was thisclose to killing a presidential candidate.
Do you want to go out to meet a candidate for Congress or a local or state political office who doesn’t have Secret Service protection right now?
Forget what happens if the candidate from the other side wins in November; this is how democracy dies.
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Chris Graham
