This interview originally aired on "In the Moment" on SDPB Radio.
It's been a few busy weeks in political news. We once again turn to our Dakota Political Junkies to bring context to an unprecedented week.
David Wiltse, Ph.D., and Lisa Hager, Ph.D., are associate professors of political science at South Dakota State University.
They join us to dig into the Constitution and American history to try to find precedents for President Joe Biden's dropping out.
Plus, how the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump could impact the election.
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The following transcript was auto-generated and edited for clarity.
Lori Walsh:
So I'm in the airport and I look up as I walk by one of the airport's bars, and I see this Trump rally, the campaign rally, and I see this footage of the assassination attempt. And so then I go and I look and I see what happened.
And then I'm back to being fascinated about the fact that nobody is gathered around the television to look at this. And this seems like pretty monumental news to me. And so I'm like, "Well, people are looking at it on their phones like I am."
So I start looking over people's shoulders and kind of spying on them to see who's watching this on the phone, who's talking about it?
And literally no one in the airport was paying attention to this news as it unfolded. I can't explain that. I don't know what was happening.
This is before the ground stoppage. I have no grander context for that.
However, that brings me to the fact that this is not the first time violence has interrupted an American presidential campaign. It's not totally unprecedented, however, it is extraordinarily rare.
So, Dave Wiltse, let's talk about the assassination attempt first. And there's lots that we still don't know about motive.
Put it in context for us. How significant is this to have it happen during a campaign?
David Wiltse:
The last time I can think of when someone did this during a campaign was when Teddy Roosevelt was running in the Bull Moose Party. I think that's the last time.
But in the grand scheme of things, assassination attempts on major political figures and violence towards political figures is unfortunately persistent. Not terribly common, but persistent enough that you can almost safely say that it is a part of the American political landscape. It's unfortunate.
To me, this was shocking. I was not in a public place when this happened like you were. But I remember when I was a little kid when Reagan was shot. We were in a mall in I think Fargo and the place just stopped and they were huddling around whatever radio or TV they could find.
And I think your little vignette speaks to the fact that it's shocking, but not terribly unexpected. And that says some things about our political system and where we've come over the past few decades. None of which is good, obviously,
Lori Walsh:
Bobby Kennedy's killed in 1968, of course, when he's running for office.
David Wiltse:
True. Sorry.
Lori Walsh:
Oh, Ellen Koester, our producer, went and found the fact, because I did not remember. And then in 1972, George Wallace was campaigning to become the Democratic nominee and was shot and was paralyzed. He survived.
So Donald Trump is largely uninjured. He has an injury to his ear, but he's not killed like Bobby Kennedy was. It is pretty shocking.
Lisa, what would you add to this about just how the introduction of political violence can change the campaign itself, the tone of it, the fervor of it?
Lisa Hager:
I would say that it definitely did change the tone of the campaign because all of a sudden we are talking more about political violence and what that means. But these past couple of weeks have just been unprecedented, like you said, where now we're focused on a candidate withdrawing, the sitting president, withdrawing from the race.
So I feel like at this point, it's almost as if some of this is getting overshadowed with the way our current political environment is.
Lori Walsh:
Right, yeah. Dave, what were you going to add there?
David Wiltse:
Oh, nothing. We just have one shocking event after another in such quick sequence that it's hard to get your bearings right now.
Lori Walsh:
There's a warning to cool down the rhetoric. And depending on how you feel about this, what side of the political aisle you're on, you might have some strong opinions about this. But by and large, everybody's like, "You really got to be careful of what you say." And Republicans have tweeted, "If you're going to say, this man is a threat to democracy, you're going to encourage some bad behavior from people who take that seriously."
Now, we heard this during the George Floyd riots, we heard this on January 6th. We're hearing it again.
How much does it matter what leaders say and how people interpret that we live in a country protected by the First Amendment, but yet there are limitations to that?
David Wiltse:
What they say matters, but where you really need to parse it out is where is it that they're saying things that might be inflammatory, but also where are they saying things that are directly inciting this kind of stuff?
I don't think you credibly accuse anyone on the political left of directly inciting this kind of violence directed at President Trump. I just don't see it.
Whereas on January 6th, you saw a lot of rhetoric coming out of the political right that was pushing people towards exactly what happened with the Capitol takeover. So this was really overplayed, I think, on the Trump camp here. And I think a lot of this stuff was just quickly dismissed and forgotten, certainly after Biden dropped out of the race.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah, let's talk about that a little bit because there had been after the debate where President Biden showed up not well. They said he was ill, he had a cold.
A lot of criticism was coming at him from his own party about his mental fitness to run the campaign. And finally after saying he was going to stay in, "He was the candidate, he was the candidate, I'm not going to give up now." He did, in fact, step aside. Lisa, constitutionally now he has a whole bunch of delegates. What happens next?
Lisa Hager:
So the biggest thing is that with the nomination, the parties are controlling that particular process. And so we can get into that if we want to here, but the constitutional question at stake is, is he unfit to run or is he unfit to continue to serve?
Because then constitutionally, there is something to do with the fact that he is unfit to serve. And so then you have the 25th Amendment coming into play where there is a procedure by which President Biden could in fact be removed from Office.
David Wiltse:
And you've seen Vance kind of play up on this in a few of his speeches and a few of his tweets. But again, that's pretty thin ground. Constitutionally, it doesn't impact this at all. This is a party matter and the party's going to settle it.
Lori Walsh:
We were talking about the 25th Amendment during the waning days of the President Trump Administration too, where people were saying he was unfit to serve. So the 25th Amendment is talked about, but we haven't seen anything much come of it. Do you anticipate anything will come of that between now and January, or now in November, where there'll be a serious challenge to Biden's fitness to be president?
Lisa Hager:
I don't think so at this point, especially since the 25th Amendment procedure involves the vice president. And I don't think that that's in the best interest of current Vice President Harris.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah. All right. So let's talk about Vice President Harris. President Biden has thrown his support behind her. What do we know about fundraising? She's on the ticket. Does she have access to campaign donations? Does she have to start afresh? What's the path ahead for her to shore up the support of delegates before a convention, not to mention American voters?
David Wiltse:
Well, the good thing as far as the delegates go is you don't need to spend a lot of money to shore up the delegates for the convention. In fact, they've pretty much done it by all the reports. That really comes from direct lobbying, direct politicking that's been going on since a couple days before Biden announced.
As far as the committee monies go, that is a somewhat open question. It's not a perfect transition, it's not as if Biden can just sign over all that money from the various committees to the Harris campaign, but some of it can, especially some of the soft money and the party money that can be very easily transitioned. But she has gone on a fundraising bonanza over the last few days. All signs are pointing to her not worrying about resources in the end. I think the Democratic base will be sufficiently energized to really infuse her campaign with the resources she needs.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah. All right. So what does she have to do? Women's path to power. Lisa Hager, this has to be an unusual path to power for Kamala Harris as a female leader or not. What can you tell us?
Lisa Hager:
I mean, it's not super common necessarily, but when Evren and I wrote our book, one of the things that we noticed is that women in presidential systems do struggle to find themselves in that top seat because of the fact that they're dealing with getting the voters to vote for them. So that's drastically different than when you can basically be put into a particular executive position like Prime Minister, for instance. And so she does have an uphill battle. I would say the fact that she's coming through that political career path is useful for her. So she has specific things that she can point to as areas of success and that I've climbed that political ladder, so to speak, that will be helpful for her.
So the one thing that we do kind of find is that women in legislatures or with legislative experience don't always do as well as those who have cabinet experience of some kind. So I think kind of seeing how this plays out with her and being the vice president will be kind of interesting because that will be different than, yes, she has legislative experience, but how does that play in with that and not having that cabinet experience?
Lori Walsh:
Right. All right. So a couple weeks ago, maybe even last week, we were saying a lot of people wanted this election to give us something new, give us something different. We don't want this whole thing litigated again. Well, guess what?
Did this just get interesting, Dave? Did the November election get more interesting?
David Wiltse:
It got a lot more interesting, it's going to get more litigious. I expect lawsuits on every single campaign committee that has any resources to dole out. There are going to be questions about the legitimacy of the path that Harris has taken. But let's just say unequivocally before 1968, this is exactly how you would've become president, or before 1972, this is exactly how you get the nominee. And in most democracies, this is how you get the nominations to office.
But yeah, it was a political earthquake between the two events, particularly Biden dropping out at this late of a date. We've not seen that. I mean, Lyndon Johnson dropped out on March 31, 1968, and people thought that was an atom bomb in the nomination. This is just a total political earthquake.
Lori Walsh:
What does she have to do? Does she have to turn her attention to the legal battles or does she need to stay clear of that and let other people fight it and just get out in front of the American people and introduce herself? Because I think some of the recent polling has said people are undecided. And when I saw those polls, I was like, "Well, of course. You would be undecided two days after the announcement is made."
But what does she have to do to move people to her side and be decided? And likewise, what do the Republicans have to do to take advantage of the fact that this change maybe works for them? Maybe it works against them. I just don't know. But what happens next?
David Wiltse:
It really cuts both ways. It really cuts both ways because in some ways you can say this is an advantage to Biden or to the Democrats because it erases all those personal issues that Biden had. He had a lot of high negatives. He doesn't have a very good popularity rating right now, approval rating right now and things just dragging him down. He wasn't doing very well with younger voters. All that's erased.
And there were a lot of Democrats across the country that were running higher than he was in terms of the tracking polls. So that's good for the Democrats' prospects.
What's bad is the organizational side of things. We have very weak parties. They are not very well-structured, they're very personalized by the presidential candidates. So the downside here is organizational, the downside is resources. Not all of those resources, not all those organizational structures are just going to smoothly transfer to Harris. So in that way, this could be challenging for the Democrats.
Lori Walsh:
A huge advantage for the Republicans. They just have a candidate who survived, who dodged a bullet. That's hard to beat in the popular lore as well. Makes him look stronger and they're leaning into that.
David Wiltse:
Yeah. But that was all against Biden's weakness, so that's kind of washed away now.
Lori Walsh:
Right, the timing, that goes back to what you said about the timing.
David Wiltse:
Yep.
Lori Walsh:
Okay. All right. Well, more later. Lisa Hager and Dave Wiltse, thank you so much.
David Wiltse:
Thank you.
Lisa Hager:
Thanks.
