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The Imagery of Election 2024

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President Donald J. Trump delivers his remarks Saturday, Feb. 29, 2019, during his appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in Oxon Hill, Md. (Official White House Photo by Tia Dufour)
Vice-President Joe Biden speaks during a welcoming and swearing in ceremony for Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel at the Pentagon, March 14, 2013. (DoD photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Chad J. McNeeley/Released)

At The Spectator, Charles Lipson discusses the imagery of election 2024 and what it means for the outcome. He writes:

The conventional wisdom is that the race for the presidency fundamentally changed with the assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump. That’s wrong. The failed attempt to kill Donald Trump didn’t change trends in this election; it reinforced them.

The shooting reinforced public images about four distinct issues.

  1. Trump’s strength and determination;
  2. Biden’s weakness, politically, physically and cognitively;
  3. Trump’s lead in the battleground states he needs to win reelection; and
  4. The failure of basic governmental institutions, such as the Secret Service, to do their job

The enduring image of the Saturday shooting is the photo of the former president as he leaves the stage. His ear was bloodied but his fist was raised, his face beleaguered but defiant, all with the American flag waving in the background.


That image will define the rest of the 2024 campaign… and well beyond it. It is indelible. And it is impossible for the opposing party to rebut, or even counter. In a single photograph, it captures Trump’s strength and his determination to fight on. That image is now burned into the public consciousness. Republican advertisements and T-shirts will keep it there.

Biden’s image, by contrast, is captured by the cover of the Economist magazine, showing an empty walker for infirm adults bearing the presidential symbol. That’s devastating, not because it is novel but because it isn’t. Images like that resonate most strongly when the capture what the public already believes.

That’s true in this case. Though the image is obviously exaggerated, it captures what the public saw with its own eyes when President Obama led Biden off the stage in Los Angeles, when Jill Biden helped the president down a few steps after his horrible debate with Trump, when a gaggle of White House aides need to surround the president for a short walk to the helicopter and, most of all, when Biden bumbled through his debate with Donald Trump.

These damning images have hardened into a concealed view of President Biden as someone who is too old and infirm to lead the country much longer. Indeed, more and more voters think he is too infirm to lead it now.

When images like that congeal, they are almost impossible to reverse. Reading from a teleprompter won’t overturn them. Alternating shouts and whispers to the press won’t overturn them. Neither will ending impromptu remarks by trailing off into space and concluding with “anyway.”

Read more here.

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