Yesterday Axios reported that a “senior House Democrat” said, “We’ve all resigned ourselves to a second Trump presidency.” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez went on Twitter to say that if this is someone’s attitude then the first thing they should do is resign from Congress. My sentiments exactly. The first thing to say about this is that we see many blind quotes in publications like this and they often trigger rounds of recriminations among Democrats when it’s unclear what if anything was actually said. I’m not saying they are fabricated. I’m sure they are real in the narrow sense. But you don’t know the context of these remarks or the identity of the speaker. So it’s a really bad idea to jump to some general diagnosis of the situation based on them. These asides are meant to spark drama and attention.

With that said, though, it’s also very clear that Democrats are caught in a wild moment of demoralization and pessimism and that it is to a real degree characterological. And a lot of that is among Democratic electeds in Washington, DC, the kind who talk a lot to the newsletters. We’ve seen a lot of it on-the-record during the Biden drama.

I don’t usually flag an Axios column for your perusal. But this one may be an exception, if only to absorb the full fluffery and myth-making that places like Axios are now doing. We hear that Trump will now be like Reagan who after his attempted assassination, they quote David Broder here, became “mythic” and “politically untouchable.” Trump is no Reagan. But then neither was Reagan. I don’t know what Broder was smoking when he wrote that but after a couple-month poll bump Reagan’s public support actually went back to where it had been and then got super low for the 1982 midterms in which Republicans got walloped. He rose again after the 1982 recession in time for his 1984 blowout. In any case, the Axios piece just keeps rollin’ from there. Trump will now be able to unite America, writes CEO Jim VandeHei. Prince Hal-like, we’re told, the real Trump is a very different man in private and will now shed his public Trumpy ways and become a new man. If there’s any question Trump’s a new man post-shooting, well, they quote Tucker Carlson telling us so.

TPM Reader KO sent me this lede from an AP piece from February of this year.

 Former President Donald Trump told thousands of members of the National Rifle Association that “no one will lay a finger on your firearms” if he returns to the White House, and bragged that during his time as president he “did nothing” to curb guns.

“During my four years nothing happened. And there was great pressure on me having to do with guns. We did nothing. We didn’t yield,” he said as he addressed the NRA’s Great American Outdoor Show in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Friday evening.

Harrisburg of all places.

From TPM Reader GS, the email that I referred to in the previous post up earlier this evening …

We still know very little about the shooter – but perhaps he has more in common with the way too common mass shooters rather than Lee Harvey Oswald or Sirhan Sirhan. 

There is the young age and apparent social rejection/isolation, and also the obv suicidal nature of trying to kill a heavily guarded former President from an exposed and visible position. 

We do not know that at this point, but if that turns out to be the case, then that is a completely different social context. Then it is not yet another case of political violence but yet another case of the epidemic of mass shootings, usually by young men. 

There are a handful of new polls which have come out in the last 24 hours, all before the events of yesterday afternoon. They each show Biden either one or two points behind or the same margin ahead, with the average leaning toward the former. This is roughly back, though not quite, to where they were the day before the debate.

Political violence and especially electoral violence strike at the heart of the open, free and democratic choice-making upon which our civic democratic system and the legitimacy of its choices are based. We must condemn it in every instance as well as expressing our personal sympathy for its victims. We do so not to box check some vague concept of civility or comity but because it strikes at the taproot of civil peace. It is equally not a license to squelch political speech or in this case threaten or intimidate those calling attention to the real and profound dangers of Donald Trump returning to the White House. We are already seeing this attempt in the making.

A few days ago, at the heart of the Biden bonfire, I told someone: Do you really imagine that the next four months are going to unfold in a straight line from the sentiment of this inflamed moment without half a dozen other things happening you didn’t predict or even imagine?

This still applies.

We now have more information on the questions I discussed below. We now appear to have a better idea of where the shooter was and how Secret Service agents were able to shoot and kill the shooter only a few seconds after he opened fire. It appears the distance between the rooftop and the stage was more like 150 yards. The building in question was a large single story building just outside the security perimeter of the event. Much closer and just to the side of the stage was another building, with a higher roof. On the roof, with a commanding over the whole area was a Secret Service counter-sniper team. It appears that some onlookers noticed that gunman on the roof and began trying to alert police and/or Secret Service agents on the ground. At this point the counter-snipers either saw the gunman on their own or perhaps heard warnings about someone on the roof in their earpieces.

So it appears they were already looking to see what was going on before the gunman fired his first shots. Quite possible this was only a matter of a few seconds. But this helps explain why they were able to shoot the gunman dead only a few seconds after he opened fire. If you see the map of the buildings in question the counter-snipers would have had a direct and unobstructed line of sight toward the shooter.

As far as we know, what happened today is that a gunman, on a roof of a low building (apparently one story) outside the rally security perimeter, shot at Donald Trump and either hit him with a grazing wound to the ear or, according to other reports, shattered the teleprompter plexiglass and shards of plexiglass struck his ear. Sort of same difference, slightly different modality.

It appears this person was firing at a relatively long range, estimates I’ve heard of 200 or 300 yards. The gunman would presumably need to plan in advance and find a rooftop from which he or she could get a direct line of sight to the stage. It’s apparently a low building in an area that is very flat. So you couldn’t assume you’d have a direct line of sight from a one story building. There’s some advance work required. Not everyone can shoot at that distance. (An AR-15 style weapon has reported been recovered at the scene.) So this isn’t a situation like getting a handgun and going into an unsecured environment which almost anyone can do. This requires planning in advance and some level of firearms knowledge. Not everyone could do this.

From our records the Trump campaign announced this event on July 3rd. So the date and location was known for at least ten days. That’s a relatively short window of time.

No particular message here, just my effort to think through the amount of advance work required, the time available to do it, and the kinds of skills required to make the attempt.

Late Update: Newer reports from CNN’s Evan Perez say that the building in question was more like 150 yards from the stage and apparently a building, unsecured, right outside the security perimeter. Don’t want to get ahead of ourselves. But there are going to be some pretty big questions why that rooftop wasn’t secured.