Talk about changing the narrative

| 9:09 am EDT July 14, 2024
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This past week the entire political media industry went to war against President Joe Biden, only for it to backfire. Biden came out of this week with momentum and renewed support. But the media was still gearing up for another week of pretending that Biden is hosed and is going to have to drop out. And then last night happened.

I’m not going to try to forecast what the political impact will be of Donald Trump getting injured in a shooting. His base will of course rally around him and fall back on conspiracy theories about how Biden was somehow behind it. But Trump’s base doesn’t count because they’re already going to vote for him anyway. Nor does it really matter what the anti-Trump crowd thinks of this, because they’re already going to vote against him. Among people in the middle, who haven’t yet decided what they’re going to do, this incident could end up having no impact at all – just as the numbers are now making clear that the debate had no impact at all.

But here’s what’s interesting. The Trump shooting has probably put the entire “Biden is going to have to drop out” media narrative to bed. The media was looking like it wanted to spend another week chasing that ghost story for whatever ratings might be there for the taking. But the Trump shooting is an infinitely more ratings-friendly story. As of now the “Biden in trouble” narrative is going to be relegated to the final five minutes of each news hour. And by the time the Trump shooting is gone from the headlines, the “Biden in trouble” story will have already disappeared altogether.

So if you’re looking at the political impact of the Trump shooting, start with the fact that the “Biden in trouble” narrative just went out the window. Like all fake storylines, the media is dropping it like a hot potato now that it has a shinier object to focus on. Beyond that, politically speaking, we’ll see what happens. Like I said, the electoral impact of the shooting could end up being zero, as so often ends up being the case with these kinds of things. These kinds of things may be a big story but they often simply don’t change votes. We’ll see.