Trump's shooting won't decide the election, but the candidates' reactions to it could

That the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump at a rally outside Pittsburgh on Saturday — where a gunman tragically killed a spectator and wounded two others while also firing a shot that grazed Trump's right ear and left him bloody, if not bowed — will punctuate the already lurid script for the 2024 election is a given.

It's still an open question how this real-life movie ends.

Certainly, the election season has been full of plot twists already: the backlash against President Joe Biden, including in Michigan, from those in his own Democratic Party for not more forcefully demanding a cease-fire by Israeli allies in Gaza; Trump's criminal conviction on falsifying hush-money payments to an adult film actress and ongoing prosecution on charges he illegally tried to overturn the 2020 election and instigated the Jan. 6, 2021 riots; Biden's faltering debate performance on June 27 in Atlanta and calls for him to step aside as nominee, amid arguments he's too old and infirm at age 81 to run again. Biden's refusal, in Detroit and elsewhere, to do so.

What's unclear is whether the horrific outcome of Saturday's rally in Butler, Pennsylvania., inevitably projects the election's ultimate result — and there's almost universal belief that, if it helps anyone, it helps Trump, who was already leading in the narrow group of swing states which includes Michigan — or whether it could serve to reset a race which, while too close to call in polling results, had appeared to have a mostly consistent trajectory in Trump's favor in recent months.

"This is an opportunity for both candidates to have a second first look by the voters," said Dan Hazelwood, a Republican consultant in Virginia who has worked in Michigan and elsewhere, including for the Bush-Cheney ticket in 2000 and 2004. "You don’t get that opportunity often in life, especially in a political campaign."

Yes, Hazelwood said, Trump, as the victim of an assassination attempt, could benefit from some undecided voters taking a sympathetic view of his candidacy, especially if he and other Republicans project a message of unity. But if it's Biden — who, in the past, has succeeded in communicating compassion and institutional stability — who can provide that measure of reassurance at a time when political violence has shown itself to be a very real possibility, then he could get a modicum of reappraisal from skeptics as well.

It doesn't fundamentally change the status of the race for most people, he said.

"The question is, where does the middle of America go?" Hazelwood said, adding that 10% or less of voters in swing states could decide the election. "The middle of America is tired. This doesn't make them less tired. This makes them hurt more."

But what does that message, that reset, sound like?

Michigan will begin to find out sooner than some other states: Trump has already said he'll hold a rally, his first after the conclusion of this week's Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, in Grand Rapids on Saturday, just a week after the shootings in Pennsylvania.

Most partisans on all sides have already decried the violent rhetoric of their extreme flanks, calling for it to be tempered in the wake of the shooting by 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, who was a registered Republican but also once gave money to a progressive cause and was killed by agents at the rally. No motive has been uncovered.

But will Trump — whose speeches are routinely laced with references comparing leftist forces to "vermin" and who held a "Stop the Steal" rally as Congress met to certify the 2020 election for Biden that presaged a mob attacking the U.S. Capitol, the perpetrators of which he has called to be released from prison — really tamp down the antagonistic speeches that so motivate his base? Will Biden — should Biden — stop referring to Trump as a threat to democracy given Trump's past actions and rhetoric as Republican critics demand?

After the assassination attempt, Biden's campaign temporarily suspended ads hitting the former president and Biden himself called Trump to wish him well. Speaking to NBC's Lester Holt, Biden also apologized in passing for saying Democrats needed to put a "bull's-eye" on Trump, though he made it clear he was speaking metaphorically about a candidate who does the same, much as Trump has referred to a "bloodbath" for domestic automakers if Biden's push to have more electric vehicles sold continues or in characterizing the situation at the Southern border with undocumented immigrants flowing in.

Biden didn't show much interest in letting Trump off the hook entirely, however. "How do you talk about the threat to democracy, which is real, when a president says things like he says?" Biden asked Holt. "Do you not say anything?"

Biden then told Holt, who asked about the president's performance at the debate in Atlanta, "Why doesn't the press report on all the lies he told? What's with you guys?"

Can Biden draw a contrast while softening his message?

But the media has repeatedly reported on Trump's false claims about election fraud in Michigan and elsewhere in the 2020 election and about foreign governments emptying prisons to send immigrants streaming into the U.S. The media has noted that, despite Republican claims to the contrary, growth in jobs and the economy under Biden has been strong, even if, like in most Western economies following the shutdowns from COVID-19, inflation skyrocketed and is only now beginning to drop consistently.

Through it all, the Biden campaign has insisted — as Biden continued to insist to Holt — that his presidency has been one of the most successful in policy terms ever, even if his favorability and job performance ratings in public polls for most of that time have been more negative than positive.

And the Biden campaign has largely insisted on making its central theme the perceived threat posed by Trump, saying he would upend the NATO alliance, give comfort to oligarchs, end aid to Ukraine and embrace a program written by many of his allies and former advisers to impose sweeping conservative changes to the U.S. bureaucracy even though Trump says he has made no promises to do so.

Can Biden win by changing that message? And if he doesn't change that message, do Republicans continue — as Trump's running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance did in the immediate aftermath of the shooting — to claim it's the Democrats who are fomenting violence?

Kevin Madden, a Washington, D.C. public affairs executive who worked as a Republican adviser on both of Mitt Romney’s presidential campaigns and has been a frequent pundit on cable news, was cautious in speaking to the Free Press, wanting to note upfront — as did other political experts — that the human cost of the attack should not be minimized. A Trump supporter, Corey Comperatore, died trying to protect his family; a former president and his party's presumptive nominee could easily have been killed.

From an electoral standpoint, Madden believed Biden has a problem resetting the race in his favor following such a tragedy.

"The thing that Biden needed to do in order to win was to disqualify Trump in the minds of many swing voters. That was why the central idea of his message was that Trump was a threat to stability," he said. "One of the challenges is — and this was evident in the public addresses Biden has made — is that he is calling for unity and a lowering of the political rhetoric. The message he was saying before Saturday has to be modulated. But it's hard to send a message with political effectiveness when it is modulated."

"Every winning campaign has two very sharp messages," Madden added. "One is really crystallizing what you're going to do the next four years. The other is that contrast message. The contrast is hard to do when you're softening your message."

Jill Alper, a nationally recognized Democratic strategist and media consultant based in Michigan, said a stark contrast can still be made.

"We disavow this violence and mourn those lost and hurt and the injury to the former president," she said. But she also argued that it's Republicans on the first night of their national convention who were "doubling-down on their message and extreme agenda."

"President Biden has long preached civility, with a theme of 'uniting the country' at the heart of his message and he’s called on Americans to 'lower the temperature,' " she said in a text to the Free Press. "Having said that, Saturday’s events don’t undo Trump’s own record of using violent rhetoric himself ... or even saying he wants to be, 'A dictator on Day One.' ”

"Democrats will need to discuss the stakes of the election with this context in mind and will do so with a close eye toward the language chosen — as should the GOP," she said.

But as Trump's choice of Vance underscored, as did an appearance by Teamsters President Sean O'Brien at the Republican convention, even as the Democratic message is recalibrated, it may become more and more difficult to tag the GOP as pro-rich, pro-corporation, given the isolationist, populist message the party under Trump has been adopting.

Given how polarizing he is, can Trump present a message of unity?

Another question waiting to be answered, one that has lingered for some months but is now underscored in the wake of the shooting last Saturday, is whether Trump has changed as a candidate.

Some events in recent months have suggested that the former president has become a more disciplined candidate. For instance, his pushing the party to not make abortion restrictions a central theme of his campaign — after having embraced them before appointing the three U.S Supreme Court justices instrumental in overturning Roe v Wade two years ago — may be seen as cynical but that doesn't mean it's not politically savvy on his part.

He also this spring backed away from what had been a refusal to back voting by mail, telling supporters at a Saginaw County airport they needed to vote this year in whatever way would bring victory. Mail-in and absentee voting was key to Biden's success in Michigan in 2020.

And in the wake of Biden's poor debate performance, Trump largely disappeared, rather than appearing to gloat — which could have given Democrats a figure to coalesce against, as some critics called for Biden's replacement as nominee.

In the aftermath of the shooting, could Trump, widely known for his over-the-top responses, take on a unifying message that would potentially expand his base?

Lon Johnson, a former Michigan Democratic Party chairman, said there is no question to his mind that the content of Trump's message remains deeply divisive and that he continues to tell "lie after lie." But he acknowledged, "We've witnessed a more-restrained Trump."

But that, too, could change. Or, something else — another plot twist — could happen. For now, all eyes are on Trump, Biden and the electorate, with Republicans appearing more and more enthusiastic, Democrats worried about their chances, and many voters simply disaffected by the political turmoil and partisan strife rending the country apart. The attempt on Trump's life did nothing to change any of those trajectories, though at least it resulted in political leaders calling for a calming of the tone.

Jamaine Dickens, a Detroit-based political consultant, said it certainly looks to him as if "everything is pointing toward bringing (the political) temperature down" which, he added, "if it lasts forever, it's a beautiful thing and a step in the right direction."

"I just don’t think it’s the Republicans' thing," he said.

Contact Todd Spangler: [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter@tsspangler.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Trump shooting a tragic twist in already dramatic presidential year