TheMarketForIdeas

In American politics, there is talk of the “October surprise”, an event that precipitates a spectacular reversal of the situation just before the presidential elections at the beginning of November, having the potential to radically change the outcome of the elections. After a prelude to the presidential race on autopilot, in which President Biden and former President Trump avoided primary debates and were their parties’ presumptive nominees with few expected surprises, July brought shocking events on both sides, that may change the course of the elections. Firstly, the June 26 early presidential debate precipitated a crisis of confidence in Joe Biden. Later, on the one hand, we have the assassination attempt against Donald Trump, resulting in one of the most powerful political images in modern history and precipitating a crisis of confidence in key organizations and a new Republican populist radicalization. On the other hand, Joe Biden announced, just a month before the Democratic National Convention that would have confirmed him as the candidate of the Party he leads for the American Presidency, that he is withdrawing from a role of candidate that he has tenaciously held onto and that he supports Kamala Harris as his successor. Donald Trump, meanwhile, picked a campaign partner with ideological weight as a promise to his supporters about his second-term commitment to the populist causes he launched but rarely followed through on. There are still more than three months until election night, and after such an inauspicious start to the real presidential campaign, we should not be surprised that the “October surprises” may keep on coming.

The Republican Phoenix

Donald Trump has always relied on the appeal of his live and unscripted events to mobilize his electoral base. Thus, he compensated both for the lack of logistics and organization of his campaign, especially in 2016, and for the permanent difference in funding between him and the Democratic counter-candidates. During one such event, on July 13, 2024, in Butler, Pennsylvania, he narrowly escaped an assassination attempt that killed one supporter and injured two others. In the ensuing cavalcade, Trump won a battle of wills with his bodyguards and exposed himself to potential shooters while covered in blood to deliver one of the most powerful campaign images in decades.

Although all factors favor the incumbent President, Trump was already the favorite of the race, having very good favorability indicators and a populist discourse aimed like laserlike at inflation, the disaster of illegal migration through the Southern border, increasing crime, but also critical approaches to foreign issues related to by Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. His reaction to the assassination attempt was a political renaissance for Trump, which we could have anticipated through positive Republican voter reactions to his legal troubles, perceived as political persecution. Through his defiant and combative attitude to the unknown danger, he sent an unfalsifiable signal of his aggressiveness and willingness to take risks. Thus, he gained a new dose of authenticity, proving that the image he projects is not just a facade. This is perhaps the most important asset for a populist, given that modern populism rejects bureaucratic leadership or the perfectly calibrated but artificial images that mainstream politicians painstakingly develop for mainstream political campaigns. From this point on, many detractors, including independents or Democrats who partially agreed with his agenda but loathed the man, declared their willingness to vote for him. They witnessed a display of “will to power” that galvanized them psychologically in a way that would have been familiar to pre-modern people.

Trump’s bad luck is that this incident happened now and not in September or October. A lot can happen by then, including the incident fading into irrelevance in people’s emotional landscape, especially since the mainstream media is not on Trump’s side. Also, his legal troubles continue, even after the dismissal of the case related to the improper storage of state secrets. We may find ourselves with an unprecedented situation of a potential president being sentenced to prison, precipitating either a destructive political showdown or setting an extremely dangerous precedent, but also clarifying this notable gap in the regulation of American politics. Those who were inspired by the incident proclaimed that Trump could not lose, and the former President greatly shifted his message to one of unity, perhaps reflecting elite shock at how their partisan rhetoric had divided society and mobilized deranged individuals to prevent what they were told they were justified in regarding as an absolute evil. More than any American President, Donald Trump has been vilified in hyperbolic terms and simulated violence against him has become very present and normalized in American society.

At the same time, Trump already had a more pragmatic approach – in 2016, he didn’t think he could win, in 2020 he didn’t think he could lose, and in 2024 he became much more attentive to the nuances of his populist insurgency. The choice of JD Vance as his campaign partner reflects Trump’s new attitude — he has (apparently) forgiven the vehement attacks on Trump that the junior senator from Ohio launched during the 2020 race and since then, has welcomed his 180-degree shift and acknowledged that he is very much in sync with the populist spirit of the movement that Trump midwifed birthed in 2015. Vance is not delivering a specific state or a specific demographic, but it is a signal of the larger ideological orientation underpinning Trump’s radical policies in his second term, as well as a pragmatic attempt to court leaders in America’s high-tech area who were generally affiliated with Democrats. Vance himself is the political creation of Peter Thiel, who aggressively bankrolled a congressional race for him that he would otherwise not have won. Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Bill Ackman, Marc Andreesen, and others represent a first wave of tech elites to defect to Trump, driven by the fight against progressive excesses and fear of over-regulation of their industries, including artificial intelligence. For his part, Trump, who has antagonized this segment in the past and tried to govern without it, welcomed them with pragmatism, forcing delegates at the Republican National Convention to drop strong anti-abortion and anti-LGBT marriage language in deference to the liberal-progressive sensibility of strategic advocates like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk.

The Democrats’ degringolade

Incumbent Joe Biden had a disastrous debate on June 26, during which he was visibly impaired from the often speculated on cognitive issues (but also by triviality, wasting time on golf handicap disputes with Trump). A deafening movement to replace him began, incorporating celebrities such as George Clooney, powerful politicians such as Nancy Pelosi and, after a while, Barack Obama, as well as big donors and the American media, and which succeeded in precipitating his withdrawal from the race in less than 25 days. He maintained until the last minute that he would run, and the social media channels used to announce his withdrawal raised questions about his health and the nature of his interaction with anti-Biden Democratic elites. It is not known what would have happened if he had insisted on remaining the Democratic nominee, but Nancy Pelosi sponsored legislation in 2020 that makes it easier to remove a President by invoking the 25th Amendment for being unable or unfit for duty.

The retirement of Biden, whose health appears to have deteriorated rapidly during his tenure, poses three major problems. The first is that, overall, he really was among the best candidates to beat Trump among those who could have run now instead of waiting for 2028 (like Gavin Newsom) — he had the advantage of being a sitting President, which provides major media exposure, which is positive for a candidate especially externally; he transferred important resources to Democratic interest groups (through funds from the Build Back Better Act and the Inflation Reduction Act) and to Democratic constituencies (through education debt forgiveness, whose notices to the beneficiaries emphasized that the Biden-Harris Administration is responsible for this unprecedented generosity); in the deeply divided party, he is still the man the various factions hate the least. This also saved him in 2020 when, after a not very brilliant campaign, the opponents in the primary elections withdrew en masse and offered him their coordinated support to galvanize the Party into a common front against Trump (successfully, as it turned out).

The second issue is related to the legitimacy of Biden’s replacement. He is the President with the most votes in history, 81 million, 13 million more than Barack Obama. The Democratic primaries were a sham (no debates with Biden and, in some cases, not even held) because the idea (traditional in American politics) was insisted on that the current president is also the presumptive candidate if he is still eligible for another term as President. The aggressive imposition of Kamala Harris as the new candidate reflects not only certain identity politics, but also an awareness of legitimacy - she was already on the Biden-Harris ticket that won in 2020, most states allow changes to a team already registered for the presidential election after the end of the period of enrollment, and funds already attracted by Biden and by political action committees (PACs) indirectly affiliated with Biden are much easier to formally transfer or redirect to Harris. Democratic leaders such as Barack Obama have suggested holding an open convention or a mini-primary campaign, to create legitimacy for Kamala Harris (with the attendant risks), but also to see potential Vice Presidents in action. Given Kamala Harris’ weaknesses (poor performance as Vice President on the Southern border or in coordinating international regulation on artificial intelligence, her unpopularity, and tendency to blunder as much as Biden), the Vice President will have an important role to play in compensating for her weaknesses. We should not be surprised if another former Presidential candidate, Pete Buttigieg, or former astronaut Mark Kelly (husband of another political assassination attempt victim, former Representative Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot in the head in 2011 and survived) or a key state governor will become Harris’ running mate.

Third, Biden’s obstinacy raises questions about the situation within the party. It is clear that the world did not hear about his cognitive problems for the first time at the June 26 debate. Throughout his term, both the party and the media covered for him. The frenzy with which he was later attacked by the media, but also the occasional presence in the media until then of signals about Hunter Biden’s laptop or discussions related to Biden’s cognitive state, suggest that the debate was not a failed plan or negligence, but the action of an anti-Biden faction that wanted him replaced as soon as possible. It is even possible that the bypassing of the democratic processes within the Democratic Party by Biden as the presumptive candidate was intended by those who were going to take him down, precisely so that his replacement would not be selected through the consultation of the mass of the Party, but through the action of some dedicated camarillas in smoke-filled backrooms. It has already been announced that Vice President Harris has enough delegates, a few days after her announcement, to be confirmed at the Convention as a presidential candidate. Last but not least, the stakes of replacing Biden were not only related to his electoral performance or his health, but also to the destabilization of the patronage networks he had built in the party and in state institutions. In part, it is a political machine inherited from Obama. Others are waiting their turn at the political trough, and Biden himself was almost unmovable because of the protection of the Democratic National Convention Coordinating Committee, which has many Biden loyalists. For this reason, Biden could only willingly give up the candidacy, not be excluded, and the stakes are not only in the Presidential and congressional elections, but also in the internal configuration of the Democratic Party and the allocation of key positions in national and state structures in which it is represented.

Conclusion

The American elections have entered a new phase after the recent shocking events. The Democratic National Convention at the end of August will announce the anti-Trump team, which seems guaranteed to include Kamala Harris. It is possible to witness other exceptional situations. For example, one way Harris could become more competitive relative to Trump would be if Joe Biden gave up the Presidency and Kamala Harris ruled for six months, ticking off numerous firsts for the US. But that doesn’t seem likely, given Biden’s current and past messages about wanting to finish out his term.

Photo source: PxHere.