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The Morning: The unicorn election?

On the 2nd Trump assassination attempt

We are less than 24 hours removed from a second planned attempt to assassinate former President Donald Trump, this time at his golf course in Florida.

This attempt comes almost three months to the day after a gunman in Butler, Pennsylvania shot Trump in the ear while he was speaking at a campaign rally.

What does it all mean? I think anyone who says they know is, frankly, bullshitting you.

Consider what has transpired over just the last 90 days:

  • July 13: Trump is wounded in an assassination attempt

  • July 15-18: Republicans hold their national convention

  • July 21: Joe Biden announces he will not seek a 2nd term

  • August 19-22: Democrats hold their national convention, nominate Kamala Harris

  • Sept. 10: Trump and Harris debate

  • Sept. 15: Trump is rushed off his golf course after another assassination attempt

In a normal political year any one of those events — and especially the assassination attempts and Biden’s withdrawal — would be HUGE deals, with the potential to fundamentally alter the shape of the race.

In this race, we have seen them all transpire in the space of the last three months.

I say all of that to note that it is possible that we are in an election so unique that our past polling and assumptions about where the race is and where it is headed are useless. That the circumstances surrounding this race make it a one of one — a unicorn election.

I think we at last have to consider that possibility now. Because while we always like to say that we’ve never seen anything like this before, we’ve actually never seen anything like this before.

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