WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) – The failed assassination attempt on former President and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has, perhaps temporarily, gotten Democrats to pause their efforts to replace incumbent Democrat President Joe Biden as their party’s nominee over his increasingly apparent cognitive decline, most recently displayed by mixing up two significant sets of names during a speech meant in part to reassure the faithful about his faculties.
Speaking at a NATO summit last Thursday, Biden erroneously introduced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as “President Putin,” the name of the Russian dictator currently invading the country of the man he was introducing. Biden quickly realized his mistake, however, returning to the microphone to clarify, “President Putin? He’s gonna beat President Putin. President Zelensky.”
Hours later at the same event, he conflated the name of his own Vice President Kamala Harris with that of his opponent in November’s election: “Look, I wouldn’t have picked Vice President Trump to be vice president (inaudible) think she was not qualified to be president.” He did not appear to catch that mistake at the time.
The snafus provided more fodder for an ongoing conversation among prominent Democrats, elevated by many of Biden’s former protectors in the mainstream media, over whether and how to replace the 81-year-old incumbent as their party’s nominee after a disastrous presidential debate performance late last month. For years, Biden has been hounded by concerns that he has been suffering cognitive decline, but that discussion was largely suppressed by Democrats and their media allies until the debate.
The subject was all but certain to continue dominating political headlines until Saturday’s shooting at a Trump rally in Pennsylvania, where Trump narrowly missed being assassinated by a gunman who killed one audience member and critically wounded two others. The attack has since dominated the political conversation, and CBS News’ Robert Costa reported Sunday that those attempting to pressure Biden into dropping out are “standing down” in the wake of the attack.
“I’ve been speaking with some top Democrats,” he said. “They believe that those Democrats who have the concerns about President Biden are now standing down politically, will back President Biden because of this fragile political moment. All of that talk about the debate faded almost instantly among my top Democratic sources as this unfolded. Say it’s time for the country to stick together, and that means Democrats sticking together as well.”
The talk of unity may be face-saving cover, however, for far more pragmatic considerations: Democrats’ inability thus far to convince Biden and his loyalists to step aside, paired with a growing resignation that the combination of recent events in Trump’s favor may be too much for Democrats to overcome.
Polling aggregations by RealClearPolitics and RaceToTheWH indicate a slim popular-vote lead for Trump in the November election, and, more important, leads in swing states translating to an Electoral College advantage over Biden.