My Thoughts on the Shootings in Butler

All right, I have not tweeted about the shooting on Saturday evening, mostly out of shock and also because I wanted to start getting some facts to go with the inevitable shuffle that happens after an enormous political event.  Even now, some 12 hours later, there are a lot of things that we're still sorting through, and will inevitably learn in the days and weeks ahead, but part of running this blog is me processing through politics as much as it is me analyzing it, and I want to get some of my initial thoughts on paper so they're no longer in my head.

Here's what we do know-last night, in Butler, Pennsylvania, at a campaign stop, there was what appears to be an assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump during a campaign rally he was doing in the city.  Trump's would-be assassin, twenty-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks (we're breaking a rule I have on the blog about not listing shooters by name given the historical nature of this, and given the conversations about Crooks' political identity, which we'll get into in a second), was killed during the shooting, as was at least one other person.  Trump appeared to be injured by a bullet; photos showed a bullet near his head, and that he was bleeding from his ear.  The former president's press team has said it was only a minor injury, and he is expected to make a full recovery.  The former president spoke last night with current-President Joe Biden, his political opponent in the race.

That's what we do know.  It's important to focus also on what we don't know, specifically the shooter's motives and political beliefs.  There seems to be consensus that Crooks is a registered Republican, but given his age, the upcoming November election would have been the first presidential general election that he was eligible to vote within.  According to the Wall Street Journal this morning, he did have explosives in his car, which had resulted in a bomb squad being brought to the scene.  There are reports that when he was 17, Crooks donated $15 to the "Progressive Turnout Project," an organization focusing on electing progressive politicians to office, through the site ActBlue, which exclusively caters to Democratic candidates and causes.  This is currently alleged-I've seen this from a number of reputable news organizations (including Reuters) stated as fact, so I assume it is true, but there is enough swirl online that this might be a different person (given Crooks' common first, middle, and last names, anything you find on Google should be treated with mountains of salt) that I want to point out that this might be another person who donated to ActBlue, and we should have confirmation one way or the other in the days ahead.

This is a good reminder that this is the first presidential assassination attempt (if that ends up being what this was, which at this point appears likely) to occur in the age of social media, so a lot of misinformation, particularly on Twitter where the algorithm is not chronological but oftentimes puts older tweets in front of newer ones, could exist for a while, and you should take anything you're hearing that feels alleged or new information as just that until it's had a few days to settle.  The Trump Era of America has been defined by conspiracy theories, invited in many ways by Trump himself through his repeated falsehoods about the 2016 & 2020 presidential elections, his politicians, his legal issues, and the Covid vaccine.  That an assassination attempt would be spared such theories, even from Democrats who are less prone to such beliefs, would be too much to ask.  

I also think it's wise to remember that social media is forever.  Some people who felt gleeful or joking about this is on social media yesterday likely will regret it when it comes back to them, or their tweets are put in GOP ads (or seen by their employers).  It goes without saying, but I'm going to say it anyway: yesterday was a really dark & sad day for the United States, even if it feels like one that was inevitable.  Violent tensions have risen in the past decade, in large part because of the rhetoric that Trump has normalized in political discourse.  Trump has literally said "if I don't get elected, it's going to be a bloodbath for the whole country" and told the white supremacist group Proud Boys to "stand back and stand by."  He has praised the people who stormed the US Capitol on January 6th, even though they were chanting to kill Vice President Pence at the time.  This sort of violent rhetoric is dangerous, and we saw that materialize yesterday.

I'd like to hope this would be a moment that would unite the country not behind Trump, but behind the idea that this sort of rhetoric must stop, but that was not the case in the hours that followed Trump's attack.  While President Biden and virtually every Democrat in Congress decried the attack, some Republicans took this as an opportunity to score political points.  Sen. JD Vance (R-OH), who is likely to become the Republican vice presidential nominee next week, said "the central premise of the Biden campaign is that Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs.  That rhetoric led directly to President Trump's attempted assassination."  Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) accused Democratic members of Congress, specifically Troy Carter, Barbara Lee, Frederica Wilson, Yvette Clarke, Bonnie Watson Coleman, Jasmine Crockett, Joyce Beatty, & Steve Cohen by name of "wanting this to happen" (it should be noted that with the exception of Cohen, all of the representatives listed by Greene are African-American).  Rep. Mike Collins of Georgia was the most incendiary, specifically stating "Joe Biden sent the orders" on Twitter about the attack.

Paul Pelosi

This is really, really dangerous, and really scary.  Greene naming people by name, and Republicans accusing, with absolutely no evidence, the shooter of being a liberal, is really scary, and certainly by naming people who had nothing to do with the attack as culpable, they are setting the stage for other future violence.  It should be noted that this is not the first such example of political violence in the time since Trump entered politics.  We already discussed the January 6th terrorist attacks, but there's also the mail bombing attempts made in 2018 against high-profile Democratic leaders like Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Maxine Waters, & Debbie Wasserman Schultz.  There was also the assassination attempt on the life of Paul Pelosi, the husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, which occurred just days before the 2022 midterms.  In both cases, it would turn out that the men responsible were Trump supporters (though of course Trump did not have anything directly to do with these attacks), and in the case of Pelosi, rather than offering support, high-profile Republicans like Claudia Tenney, Marjorie Taylor Greene, & Donald Trump himself would mock Pelosi's assassination attempts publicly (Speaker Pelosi, of course, offered well wishes for Trump and condemned the violence even though he had publicly mocked her husband of 60 years being brutally attacked).

This is an election analysis blog, and I suspect if you've made it this far, you want my opinions on how this will impact the presidential race.  I think this is another case where it's worth noting that we do not know what will happen.  Something like this in the era of social media has never happened before, and so anyone speaking in absolutes is going to be in trouble.  I'll say a couple of things though.

First, historically assassination attempts are not necessarily a harbinger of future electoral success.  Similar to Trump, Teddy Roosevelt, George Wallace, and Gerald Ford all would suffer assassination attempts, in Roosevelt & Wallace's cases during an active campaign...none of these men would win their next election.  Paul Pelosi's attack was just days before his wife would lose control of the House majority.  An assassination attempt has never swayed an American election is what I'm getting at here.  And in an era where gun violence is commonplace to the point where it's barely news anymore, one wonders how long this will stay in the minds of your average American, especially given we are still four months out from November.

But that doesn't mean that this won't be part of the campaign, as it surely will be.  The RNC is next week, and given Vance & Greene's comments, it seems certain that the Republicans will do two things during their speeches: try to portray Trump as a hero/martyr for the cause, and blame this violence on the Democrats.  The former is undoubtedly going to be effective to some degree, and weirdly plays right into their campaign's hands.  The single biggest issue in the campaign right now is Joe Biden's age, and this makes Biden look more feeble by comparison, particularly given that Trump's defiant fist raising while being shot will be played repeatedly in the days ahead.  If we don't hear the line "Trump can take a bullet for America, Biden can't even make it through a debate" next week, I will be stunned.  It's possible that the Republicans will overplay their hand with the latter, however.  Americans are not dumb, and while this will help turnout for Trump's base, particularly in Pennsylvania (where the shooting happened, and in, it has to be said, the most important swing state on the map) and his donations (when Biden is hemorrhaging cash), they will not like Trump trying to score political points off of this if it feels like overreaching.  There's evidence that sometimes what seems like overreach in retrospect works at the time (just ask Max Cleland and John Kerry), but in a savvier social media world (and with a more polarized electorate), he runs the risk of seeming opportunistic, which will be particularly gauche given that someone died yesterday.

As for Biden, this puts him (and the Democrats) in an impossible situation, and not just because in the upcoming days & weeks, it will be challenging to attack Trump while Republicans claim on national television every night that the reason he was shot was because of said attacks.  The single best card the Democrats had yet to play was to replace Biden and run against Trump with a younger candidate, as I feel (and feel even more so now) that Biden is not capable of creating a winning coalition in November.  But now, that story is off the front pages, and Democrats (famously risk-averse) are going to want to revert to status quo when having someone who could present a new face to America (like Kamala Harris or Gretchen Whitmer) would be a good strategy.  How can you claim that you're the person who can end this kind of violence while you were in charge of the country when it happened (that's not fair, but it's a question a lot of swing voters will ask)?  Biden became an even worse candidate yesterday (through no fault of his own)...he also became more likely to be the nominee because it's hard not to assume that he'll think any attempt to step aside now will look like cowardice, and Biden (who has made a more old-fashioned masculinity a central tenet of much of his rhetoric through the decades, especially as president) won't want to risk being called a coward.  As a result, it seems incredibly unlikely at this point that Democrats will replace Biden as their nominee...and that is their single best way to win the November election.