How to Lose an Almost Sure-Thing Election in Four Steps

A ruthlessly objective pre-post-mortem

Aug 15, 2024

“The presidential contest ended last night.”— anonymous Democratic consultant, July 14

That quote, obtained by NBC News, summed up the prevailing sentiment among Democrats the day after Trump was shot. “We’re so beyond f—ed,” another party operative added, pointing to how Trump had managed to magnify the impact of the already monumental moment. After narrowly surviving the would-be assassin’s bullet, the bleeding candidate had repeatedly and defiantly raised his fist, cutting through the pandemonium to create an enduring and iconic image.

Pop quiz, hot shot: if you are the first American president to be criminally indicted, have already been convicted in one felony trial and have three more in the works, and your presence has been so ubiquitous and inescapable over the last decade that just about everyone on the planet has an indelible perception of you, for good or ill, what is the one thing you could do to get people to take a second look at you, to get a proverbial second chance to make a first impression? Answer: survive an assassination attempt.

The first four days after the attack couldn’t have gone better for Trump. First and most obvious, he survived. He was a survivor, a victim, and he was portrayed that way in the press, the same press that often portrays him as a villain.

Further, his initial statements after the attack couldn’t have been more well-received. He expressed gratefulness to still be alive. “I’m not supposed to be here. I’m supposed to be dead,” he told the New York Post and the Washington Examiner, adding that he escaped “by luck or by God.” He was reflective, stating that the “surreal experience” had “a lot of impact” on him.

One immediate, tangible change that Trump promised was a “more unifying” acceptance address at the Republican National Convention, which was set to begin two days after the shooting. "We had a very tough speech, and I threw it out last night, he said. “I can't say these things after what I've been through."

The RNC followed Trump’s lead and shapeshifted on the fly. For three days, one speaker after another voiced words of unity. The inclusion on the docket of some former, bitter rivals of Trump from the Republican primaries this year and in 2016—Nikki Haley; Ron DeSantis; Marco Rubio; Ted Cruz—only reinforced the theme.

Convention attendees exuded optimism and confidence. Multiple journalists reported that Republicans on site seemed to believe their ticket was unbeatable. Republican senators, who are currently in the minority, gleefully anticipated regaining majority status.

Other events began to break Trump’s way also. Two days after he was shot, a federal judge dismissed all the charges he was facing in his trial for mishandling classified documents. And shares of Trump Media surged, along with other stocks seen as Trump-friendly, such as cryptocurrency and firearms.

Meanwhile, Democrats were in meltdown mode. In the Real Clear Politics average of polls, Trump was leading Biden by almost three points even before somebody tried to kill him. Now, party mouthpieces were fending off questions about Biden’s physical deterioration and whether the party’s rhetoric toward Trump was to blame for the attempted murder.

Some Democratic officials even threw more wood on the fire in the aftermath. Several state Democrats exemplified partisan inhumanity through social media posts that blamed Trump and his followers for the attack, trafficked in conspiracy theories about it and complained that the event had created “sympathy for the devil,” in the words of Colorado state Rep. Steven Woodrow. A Democratic congressional staffer even recommended “shooting lessons” for Trump’s slain attacker, Thomas Crooks.

And some Democrat-aligned celebrities poured accelerant. Most visibly, Tenacious D bass player Kyle Gass made an onstage birthday wish that future assassins “don’t miss Trump next time,” which prompted his more well-known bandmate, Jack Black, to cancel the band’s tour and suspend its projects, while Gass was dropped by his talent agency. Less publicly, comedian Frankie Boyle posted that he had a “strong hunch the Trump shooter will turn out to be a time traveller,” playing on the oft-used, science-fiction trope of a character being sent back in time to kill someone in order to prevent that person from destroying the planet.

Step 1: Undermine all the prior hype about unity and your own personal transformation by going off-script and turning your acceptance address into a rambling, combative stump speech

All he had to was read the teleprompter.

The world was watching, waiting to hear from the president who cheated death. Across America and the rest of the planet, people of every persuasion tuned in to see what the experience had done to him. Waiting to see the promised, newly reborn candidate, viewers had one question on their minds: was Trump a changed man?

The speechwriters did their jobs. The words of the address—the ones that were actually written and preloaded into the teleprompter—struck the same notes as the preceding speakers.

Maybe he was feeling cooped up after the days he spent recovering from his wounds. Maybe he felt like getting shot had interrupted him, and he simply wanted to pick up where he left off in his speech five days earlier.

Whatever the reason, Trump decided to add a commentary track to his address that upended not just his own scripted words, but the scripted message of the entire convention. He turned an acceptance address, which is supposed to be, yes, triumphal, but also reverential, into one of his fiery, free-wheeling rallies.

The teleprompter operators definitely did their jobs. The device constantly had to be paused, as Trump repeatedly launched into lengthy digressions that undercut the words he was reading. Then, it immediately had to start scrolling again each time he wrapped up one of his winding ad-libs.

The extended tangents stretched the running time of the speech to more than 90 minutes, smashing the record for an acceptance address, also held by Trump, by nearly 20 minutes. The insulting nicknames and putdowns, which had been absent while he was, came bellowing back. “Crazy Nancy Pelosi.” Joe Biden, “the worst president in U.S. history.”

Viewers got the answer—likely the final one—to their question. Had Trump changed? Not much, if at all.

Step 2: Incontrovertibly drive home the point that you really haven’t changed by exhibiting absolutely none of the grace that candidates customarily accord political opponents once they are out of an election race

After seeing Trump’s speech, Biden supporters were optimistic. The president, who was recuperating from Covid, promised in a statement to return to campaigning the following week, declaring that “last night, the American people saw the same Donald Trump they rejected four years ago."

Conspiracists speculated that Trump may have reverted to demagoguery in his oratory so as to minimize his own post-convention polling bounce. The theory was that he intended to limit his lead in order to entice Biden to stay in the campaign.

Biden was enticed, but other, powerful Democrats had already lost faith. So, three days after the RNC wrapped, Biden finally relented under pressure and left the race.

Traditionally, no matter how ugly a campaign gets, candidates react to the withdrawal or concession of their opponents by saying something nice about them. These statements may be utterly lacking in sincerity and laden with stale cliches about opponents’ "hard-fought” and “vigorous” campaigns and expressions of gratitude for their “lifetime of service.” But, the still-standing candidate at least conveys some sort of positive message about the felled opponent.

Not Trump. The Republican nominee immediately sent Biden off by amplifying his derogatory remarks at the RNC, naming Biden “the single worst president by far in the history of our country.” Trump wasn’t done, later posting on social media that was Biden “crooked,” “not fit to run” and claiming that “he only attained the position of president by lies, fake news, and not leaving his basement.”

Step 3: Choose a running mate who has previously made comments that alienate large swaths of the electorate.

It’s questionable whether the infamous “cat ladies” interview would have even come up during Sen. J.D. Vance’s vice-presidential vetting. After all, by Trumpian standards, the slur is mundane, an every-day-that-ends-in-y-type remark, that, if it was the most inflammatory thing that Trump said that day, would be met with relief from his more conscientious supporters.

Still, America knows Trump, whereas to the national audience, Vance, who was revealed as the vice-presidential nominee two days after Trump was shot, is fresh on the scene. So, the newly launched Kamala Harris campaign seized the opportunity to help remind Americans of the 2021 Fox News interview where Vance told Tucker Carlson that Harris and other Democrats were “a group of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they have made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too.”

Again, by the norms of contemporary politics, we should write this one off with a hashtag and the word “burn,” and move on, especially since it happened three years ago, before Vance was even in government. But, Vance was being introduced to the country, and when Internet partisans see an opportunity, they, well, pounce.

The resurfaced comments went viral and simultaneously ticked off not just childless women with cats, but childless women with other pets, other childless cat and pet owners, other women in general, and other cat and pet owners in general. Journalists and Democrat-supporting celebrities piled on, and the GOP ticket was knocked even further off-message.

Step 4: As a white candidate, question the ethnic origins of a non-white candidate in front of a group of non-white journalists. Bonus points if you do it in contemptuous fashion. Double bonus if this is reminiscent of something you’ve done in the past involving the country’s first non-white president.

In a few months, this may become arcane campaign trivia, but for much of this year, Trump seemed poised to receive an unprecedented level of support from voters of color for a modern, Republican presidential candidate. He had held rallies to reach out to black communities in Harlem, the Bronx, Philadelphia, Atlanta and Detroit. Numerous hip-hop performers and other black artists publicly endorsed him.

Perhaps Trump went into his appearance before the National Association of Black Journalists, held a couple weeks after the convention, feeling like he had attained a sense of “cred” from the host of rappers backing him. Or maybe his dislike of non-conservative journalists simply knows no color.

But, whatever his thinking, he promptly kicked off the session by tearing into a black, female moderator for not greeting him and asking her “nasty” question in “a horrible manner.” Later, he asserted—without citing evidence—that he was “the best president for the black population since Abraham Lincoln.”

But, it was a question about several Republicans having called Harris a “DEI hire” that teed up Trump’s most incendiary quotes. By invoking the acronym for diversity, equity and inclusion employment practices, these officials were writing Harris off as what used to be called an “affirmative action hire.” In other words, they were asserting that she got her job merely because she checked the right demographic boxes, an incredibly pejorative accusation (and one that could easily warrant inclusion on our list as an additional, fifth step).

However, rather than distancing himself from these statements, Trump built on them. “She was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage, he claimed of Harris. “I didn’t know she was black until a number of years ago when she turned black, and now she wants to be known as black. So, I don’t know, is she Indian or is she black?”

This wasn’t the first time Trump had questioned the heritage of a presidential candidate of color. From 2011 to 2016, right before his first election, Trump frequently questioned President Obama’s birthplace and the legitimacy of the birth certificate that showed that the former president was born in Hawaii. (To be fair, this speculation was first stoked by supporters of Hillary Clinton in 2008).

After Biden withdrew from the race, Trump’s lead dropped to less than two points, according to Real Clear Politics’ polling average. His margin has evaporated steadily since then, and, as of Aug. 7, he now trails Harris by a half-point.

In a week, Democrats will host their own convention in Chicago. According to Gallup, party conventions usually produce around a five-point uptick for the nominee. If this holds to form, Harris will enter the homestretch of the campaign with a significant lead.

The candidates’ fortunes still could reverse. Harris’ honeymoon with the press could end. Her own introduction to America at the Democratic National Convention could go awry, especially if the DNC goes the way it did the last time it was held in Chicago, in 1968. Trump could prevail over her convincingly in their scheduled September debates. Rumblings of recession or widening wars could give voters pause about her readiness to meet those challenges. Previously unknown, scandalous details could emerge about her personal history or views that she expressed in the past.

But, if Trump loses, he will bitterly regret his failure to capitalize on the opportunity for rebirth he was given after having survived death. And he’ll forever be haunted by a simple realization.

All he had to do was read the teleprompter.