Election 2024: Assassination Attempts and the Art of Motorcycle Riding

You knew I was going to go there sooner or later, right?

So, a second (supposedly -- my guess is there have been a lot more that never got quite so far and/or never got publicly divulged) assassination attempt on disgraced former president Donald Trump.

And a second decision on the part of Republicans -- excepting, briefly, Trump himself the first time -- to lean into the "this is all the Democrats' fault" curve direction in search of sympathy, rather than counter-leaning toward the middle of the "civility" / "can't we all get along" road and letting the sympathy generate itself.

Explanatory video for those who don't instantly grasp the first of two motorcycle metaphors in this post (and if you find motorcycles even the tiniest bit interesting, I recommend all the content you'll find on the FortNine Youtube channel):

I get it: MAGA World is in full-on, bug-eyed, squat-and-pee panic because Kamala Harris hasn't crashed and burned ... yet. They see her pulling ahead, they're looking for an inside track to catch up, and it just feels correct to lean that bike over into the "screech about how mean the Democrats are" curve, twist the throttle to all the way back, and pray.

But it's a bad idea. It's inherently unstable, more likely to result in a crash, and extremely unlikely to generate the desired for sympathy from voters (quantified by gaining on Harris in the polls).

Cold comfort as it may be, there's another motorcycle metaphor -- or at least maxim -- applicable to this situation:

"Ride your own ride."

In the motorcycle world, that tends to apply to group rides, peer pressure, and trying to keep up with your friends, but it's just good general advice on and off of a motorcycle.

You got your motorcycle license last week and bought a Honda Grom.

Your best friend has been on motorcycles since he was five years old and rides a Suzuki GSX1300R Hayabusa.

You are not going to ride as well, or as fast, as your friend. If you try, there's a very good chance you will damage your bike, your body, or both.

That doesn't mean you can't get from Gainesville, Florida to Tallahassee faster than he does.

He might get pulled over for doing 140 miles per hour on I-75/I-10. Or get caught in one of that freeway's hours-long "OK, it's a parking lot" situations. Or just get distracted and plow into the back of some poor snowbird's RV.

If you try to take that Grom down I-75/I-10, you might end up under an 18-wheeler because you're lugging along at 55 miles per hour on a road where most people are doing at least 80 if they're moving at all. What you won't do is ride faster than your friend. His bike is more powerful than yours and he knows how to ride it better than you know how to ride yours.

You're better off hopping on non-freeway US 27, hopefully keeping up with traffic, and seeing if you can make the 143-mile trip safely, and maybe, just maybe, faster than your friend can cover 150 miles on I-75 and I-10.

You probably can't, but that's your best chance.

Ride. Your. Own. Ride.

As with the Grom v. Hayabusa ride, the Trump campaign's best ride strategy is plugging along on whatever pluses it can generate, while hoping that the Harris campaign suffers some kind of epic flame-out of its own instead of making itself look ridiculous, and possibly getting itself badly injured, in an attempt to catch up to and pass a currently more powerful vehicle on a more dangerous road.