After a two-week detour through the landscape of Democratic angst, Donald Trump has once again reclaimed the center stage of the political world. President Joe Biden will be interviewed on NBC tonight, but this will likely become no more than a footnote in a dramatic week for Trump and the Republican Party.

Part of this shift in focus was planned, as the Republican National Convention gets underway in Milwaukee today, but the most dramatic event was not. Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt in a small town in Pennsylvania over the weekend, as his ear was apparently grazed by a bullet fired at him from a roof overlooking his rally. One spectator was killed and two seriously injured in the attack. This is likely to generate some sympathy for Trump, although assassination attempts are rare enough that it's impossible to say what the political effect will be. One thing that's certain is that it will become a central focus at the convention.

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Well, that was another week mostly wasted.

This isn't just our opinion, either. Here is what Biden campaign chair Jen O'Malley Dillon had to say in an all-staff call yesterday:

We had two very, very, very hard weeks, very bad weeks. I told you I'd level with you; they've been bad fucking weeks. This two-week window has really sucked, and it is hard, there is no doubt about it.

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President Joe Biden just gave a solo press conference today. Before it took place, the media had a lot of time to kill, due to the presser being postponed multiple times (it finally began just before 7:30 Eastern, almost two hours after it was scheduled). The most cogent comment I heard from the pundits was someone essentially saying that it could be a "break" moment (if Biden did badly), but that it probably wouldn't be a "make" moment, since no matter how good Biden did the fears will not be completely put to rest -- we'll just be in a sort of endless cycle of every unscripted appearance by Biden becoming its own make-or-break moment on its own. That seemed about right, to me, and it still seems right after watching Biden's performance.

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Will President Joe Biden's re-election candidacy survive the week? That is the question on every Democrat's mind right now, as the forces line up both pro and con. Whatever happens, it pretty much has to happen soon. If Biden does somehow survive this week, then his chances of riding out the entire "Pass the torch, Joe" storm will have increased, that much seems somewhat certain. But with Congress back in session, all the elected national Democrats will be in one place again, and in both the House and Senate they are planning on holding very tense caucus meetings tomorrow.

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This week, the nation celebrated its 248th birthday. (Feel free to insert a "Biden's so old" joke here, if you wish....)

It's been a rather excruciating week, aside from enjoying the fireworks last night. The entire political media universe has been completely consumed with the question of whether President Joe Biden is the best candidate to take on Donald Trump, or whether he should instead gracefully step aside and allow the Democrats to nominate someone younger who might have a better chance at victory in November. We have to admit, we've never really seen anything like this (but then we are too young to remember Lyndon B. Johnson in 1968). The pressure on Biden seems to only be growing, day by day, as more and more people come to the conclusion that Democrats would be better served with a new nominee.

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We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

-- Preamble to the Declaration of Independence

That line will be widely quoted across this land today, in parks and bandstands, on radio and in newsprint, from California to the New York islands, in countless big-city parades and from a myriad of small-town gazebos.

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Back in the early 1980s (before he was in his early 80s), the punk band The Clash put out a song asking what has now become Joe Biden's new existential question:

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Maybe it's just us, but this week seemed like a waiting game. Perhaps the midweek holiday had something to do with it, but everything in the political world right now seems to be on hold in anticipation of next Thursday's first presidential debate. The debate is going to be incredibly early in the campaign schedule, but nobody really knows what this will mean until after the dust settles. Who will benefit the most from the earliness of it all? Well, that all depends on how they do, of course.

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President Joe Biden has had to walk a tightrope on the subject of immigration during his term in office. He has supported programs that were a holdover from the administration of Donald Trump, and just recently announced a tightening of the rules on claiming asylum at the border in an effort to slow the flow of people making such claims. Neither one of these policies went over very well with the progressives in his own party, but this week Biden shifted gears and announced a policy that will benefit the lives of approximately 500,000 people. Undocumented spouses of America citizens who have lived in the country for 10 years or more will have a much easier path to citizenship under Biden's new program. Politically, this may provide a balance to Biden's more restrictive moves on immigration.

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The Washington Post is now reporting that Robert F. Kennedy Junior will not meet the criteria that CNN instituted for inclusion in the first general-election presidential debate. This is not really all that surprising, since the criteria were essentially written to exclude Kennedy and other third-party candidates. And while Biden supporters might cheer the news that only President Joe Biden and Donald Trump will participate, it does highlight the hurdles built in to the American political system for those without a "D" or "R" after their names.

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