The old hockey saying is, “Skate to where the puck is going, not to where it has been.” When President Trump was almost assassinated, I, like many others, said, “That’s it! The election is over.” I never thought Trump would waste his near-death experience the way he did. He had the entire nation on his side because everyone believed our political rhetoric had gone too far. Trump did the right thing by mostly staying quiet in the days after the attempt on his life. President Biden was blowing in the wind, with his party pushing with all their might to get him to step aside and let anyone take his place on the ticket. The Democrats were imploding, the media was demoralized, and the Republican National Convention was firing on all cylinders. Trump, overconfident, skated to the puck.
His first mistake was picking Senator J.D. Vance for his VP. I have nothing against Vance personally or politically. Frankly, I don’t know that much about him. What I do know is that he won’t bring Trump any additional votes nationally. He’s a white male, which, in this day and age, is not the right political move. He’s from Ohio, which is a swing state, but I believe anyone voting because of Vance in Ohio would have voted for Trump anyway. I think he needed to pick Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina. Tim Scott is well-liked in the South and would bring more Black and other minority voters into the fold. Black men were starting to shift to Trump, and picking a well-liked Black senator from the South might push them from leaning to voting. It may have had the same effect on Latino voters and Black women. We will never know.
Trump’s second mistake was his RNC acceptance speech. With the nation in the palm of his hands, there was a large audience waiting to hear what he was going to say in his first speech post-assassination attempt. The first thirty minutes were pretty riveting. I thought using the uniform and helmet of the firefighter who was killed that day was a little tacky but politically astute. It hammered home the reality of what happened that day and what could have happened if Trump hadn’t turned his head at the exact right moment. The crowd was silent, and some were even in tears as he recalled the event. He brought the moment to a crescendo, showing the now-iconic photo of him raising his fist and yelling, “Fight, fight, fight” to the crowd at the rally. There wasn’t a red-blooded American who didn’t root for him in that moment. He should have used the next fifteen minutes to quickly go through how he would repair the nation after Biden is defeated and then five minutes on bringing the country together with a uniting speech about taming political rhetoric. But instead, he droned on for an hour with his usual stump speech. What made it more boring were his usual off-script side comments that might be entertaining at a rally but not appropriate for the audience he should have been trying to reach.
While all this was going on, the Democrats were, in hindsight, obviously putting huge pressure on Biden to step aside. Post-assassination attempt, it didn’t seem like any Democrat was willing to put their reputation on the line to lose to Trump. Things were leaning more and more every day to the choice they didn’t want to make: pushing Kamala Harris as the nominee. When it happened, it caught Trump and the Republicans flat-footed. I don’t believe they thought it would actually happen. But it did.
The media turned on a dime and started reinventing Harris. I was channel-flipping through ABC, NBC, and CBS, and all three were showing nothing but presidential-like photos of Harris and pumping up her non-existent record. The propaganda machine was firing on all cylinders. Suddenly, the assassination attempt fell to the side, and the anticipated debate between Vance and Harris shifted to Trump and Harris. The tone changed because instead of two old guys debating, where Trump was obviously more energetic and on-the-ball, there would be a glaring generational difference when Trump and Harris took the stage together. In one swift move, followed by an enormous propaganda machine, the momentum swung away from advantage Trump to all things equal.
Moving Harris to the top of the ticket negated anything Vance brought to Trump’s campaign. Vance is now debating a non-existent opponent. He’s shadow boxing, and the punches are landing nowhere. If Harris picks a Black man for her running mate, the Trump campaign might be over. Democrats and progressives vote for labels. Yes, they think about policy too, but labels come first. Perception over reality is more important. If Harris chooses a Black man, maybe Senator Raphael Warnock, as her VP, what Black person wouldn’t want to vote for the first all-Black ticket in American history? Trump should have seen this possibility.
We’re in the Harris honeymoon right now, so anything can happen. She’s not the brightest bulb and usually puts her foot in her mouth when speaking off-script. If she’s not supremely prepared, she speaks in nonsensical word salad. She’s done little to nothing as VP, and her record in California should not play to Black and minority voters. She was famously anointed Biden’s border czar, and nothing the media does will bury that, no matter how hard they try. There’s too much video of the media themselves giving her that label. Harris also talked up how sharp Biden was during the time we all knew he was in decline. She was one of the many liars that tried to hide Biden’s worsening dementia. That alone should disqualify her from being President. But, so far, I haven’t seen any proper counter punches by Trump or the Republicans.
Trump screwed the pooch. He thought he already won after the botched assassination, and the obvious incompetence of the Biden administration in full view. But, you can’t skate to the puck. Once you get there, it’s already gone. Now, unless Harris makes a major misstep, Trump has to pull out all the stops if he plans on winning.