{"id":10755,"date":"2024-07-23T05:24:51","date_gmt":"2024-07-22T17:24:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=10755"},"modified":"2024-07-23T05:24:51","modified_gmt":"2024-07-22T17:24:51","slug":"democrats-hope-to-use-crisis-to-transform-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=10755","title":{"rendered":"Democrats hope to use crisis to transform election"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><i>Analysis<\/i>: It&#8217;s just over a week since Donald Trump was\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/world\/522132\/possible-security-lapses-in-focus-after-trump-rally-shooting\">almost assassinated<\/a>\u00a0at a rally in Pennsylvania. And in the last eight days the US presidential election has been totally turned on its head.<\/p>\n<p>In that short time Trump has been greeted like a messiah at the Republican National Convention and crowned\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/world\/522566\/watch-donald-trump-takes-to-stage-for-first-speech-since-assassination-attempt\">as the party&#8217;s candidate<\/a>, whilst Joe Biden\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/on-the-inside\/522776\/us-president-joe-biden-age-and-optics-just-too-hard-to-fight\">has been reluctantly forced out<\/a>\u00a0of the race.<\/p>\n<p>Obviously it was Biden&#8217;s\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/world\/521182\/biden-blames-jet-lag-and-travel-for-poor-debate-performance\">disastrous performance<\/a>\u00a0in the televised\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/world\/520760\/us-presidential-debate-recap-joe-biden-and-donald-trump-go-head-to-head\">debate last month<\/a>\u00a0that caused the panic within the Democratic Party &#8211; but their doubts went deeper than that.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><b><i>Read more:<\/i><\/b>\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/world\/520792\/biden-trump-us-presidential-debate-what-the-data-shows-about-who-said-what\">Biden-Trump US presidential debate &#8211; who said what<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The president was trailing Trump in the polls before he challenged his opponent to a live televised debate.<\/p>\n<p>He only came up with that idea because he urgently needed to reset his campaign.<\/p>\n<p>The hope was that getting voters to focus on what Trump could do if he was re-elected to the White House would boost support for Biden. His campaign was based around the idea that if this election was a referendum on Trump then Biden would win.<\/p>\n<p>But the rambling and incoherent performance from the president immediately turned this into a referendum on Biden and his fitness for office.<\/p>\n<p>Suddenly it was an open secret that the president had episodes in which he was far from cogent. The excuses &#8211;\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/world\/521182\/biden-blames-jet-lag-and-travel-for-poor-debate-performance\">he had a cold, he had jet-lag<\/a>\u00a0&#8211; were weak and scarcely believable.<\/p>\n<p>Savvy Democrats also sensed a potential opportunity. A chance to transform this race and maybe energise voters who were seriously disenchanted with having to make a choice between the same two old men who ran against each other last time.<\/p>\n<p>Any contest to select a new candidate will have to be brief. The Democratic National Convention is scheduled to confirm its candidate on 19 August.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><b><i>Read more:<\/i><\/b>\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/world\/522751\/explainer-biden-will-step-aside-in-the-2024-race-what-happens-next\">Explainer &#8211; Biden will step aside, what happens next?<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>But four weeks of debates, hustings and town hall events with some of the party&#8217;s talented and experienced younger candidates could be exciting and attract the attention a new nominee will need.<\/p>\n<p>Yet it seems that the party is rapidly coalescing around Vice-President Kamala Harris as their new candidate.<\/p>\n<p>rnz<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Analysis: It&#8217;s just over a week since Donald Trump was\u00a0almost assassinated\u00a0at a rally in Pennsylvania. And in the last eight days the US presidential election has been totally turned on its head. In that short time Trump has been greeted like a messiah at the Republican National Convention and crowned\u00a0as the party&#8217;s candidate, whilst Joe [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":10756,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10755"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10755\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10757,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10755\/revisions\/10757"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}