An American flag hangs over the stage amid an investigation into gunfire at a campaign rally for Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. president Donald Trump, in Butler, Pa., on July 15.Carlos Osorio/Reuters
Debra Thompson is a contributing columnist for The Globe and Mail.
Shortly after former U.S. president Donald Trump was shot during a campaign event in Pennsylvania, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, now set to be Mr. Trump’s running mate for vice-president, took to X and placed blame squarely at the feet of the Democratic Party. “The central premise of the Biden campaign,” he posted, “is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”
We don’t have information yet about the intent or ideology of the shooter. Early evidence suggests that gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks fits the same profile as many of America’s notorious mass shooters: young, white, male, armed with an AR-15, somewhat of an outcast, and, presumably, angry.
But contrary to this hot take by Mr. Vance, the assassination attempt on Mr. Trump is evidence that democracy does, in fact, hang in the balance in this election.
It bears repeating that political violence is not supposed to happen in democracies. In authoritarian regimes, violence is endemic. Authoritarian leaders use violence to silence opponents and create uncertainty and fear, ensuring that the population stays docile, and the regime continues unchallenged. Sadly, in one of the world’s oldest democracies where about four in 10 people live in a household with a gun, threats of violence and attacks targeting elected officials are increasingly becoming the norm.
Mr. Trump has positioned himself as an authoritarian strongman who has at times called for various forms of political violence. He has led chants to lock up his political opponent, Hillary Clinton, requested the white nationalist group the Proud Boys to “stand by,” sent messaging that, in the words of the House Select Committee report, “lit the fire” of the violent insurrection at the United States Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and has been indicted over his attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, to name but a few examples.
It would be crude and simplistic to make an argument about chickens coming home to roost. Regardless, it’s clear that these vaguely worded allusions to violence are a reliable part of Mr. Trump’s repertoire. And he’s preaching to the choir: his brand of populism channels and takes advantage of the palpable resentment of his most ardent supporters. The groups and individuals that comprise the extreme and alt-right, once considered the fringe of American politics, are now an important faction of the Republican base.
Democrats are in an impossible situation: they must, of course, condemn the assassination attempt while denying their claims that Mr. Trump is dangerous were the impetus for the attack, and still find a way to maintain that Mr. Trump is a threat to democracy. The standard Democrat call for unity in the face of adversity (“Unity is the most elusive goal of all, but nothing is more important than that right now,” Mr. Biden said during a national address on July 14) is becoming farcical in a country that is deeply polarized and fundamentally divided, not just by party affiliation and ideology, but by class, race, region, wealth, culture and more.
If there is unity among the divisions in the United States, it’s that neither Republicans nor Democrats think that American democracy is working; according to a 2022 Quinnipiac University poll, some even believe it will come to an end during their lifetime.
Assassinations have ended democracies. They’ve started world wars, spurred progressive political change, calcified divisions and ignited electoral realignments. But democracies more often end – as political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt write in their 2018 book How Democracies Die – through the erosion of democratic norms. Their deaths are often preceded by attacks on the media, failures on the part of political parties in their role as gatekeepers, the abandonment of forbearance in the use of executive power, the demonization of political opponents and the normalization of political violence.
The attempted assassination of a former president and current presidential candidate is not to be taken lightly. We don’t yet know how this will play out in a long election campaign, which is already contentious, fraught and riddled with uncertainty.
But make no mistake: the real threat to American democracy is still Mr. Trump and his willingness – and, thanks to the recent Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity, his legal ability – to eschew the rule of law. American democracy won’t end with a bang or a gunshot; beware the whimpers.