Assassination rarely works the way assassins think it would - if they think at all.
I saw the above comic online and thought it made a good point. The idea of going back in time and killing baby Hitler and avoiding WWII and the Holocaust seems like a swell one. My Mother, growing up in the 1930's said she wanted to, as a child, travel to Germany and kill Hitler and change the world. But I think that might not have worked out the way she planned.
Suppose Hitler was admitted to art school? Would that have altered the rise of fascism in Germany - and worldwide? Because today we see the same trend toward authoritarianism in country after country, from the US to the UK, France, Turkey, India, Russia - you-name-it, chances are, there is a right-wing faction on the rise in whatever country you can think of. Recent elections in France and the UK seem to give hope to the idea that people are fed up with the far right. We'll see.
But killing political leaders (or trying to)? That rarely seems to effect the change the assassin wanted, if they indeed wanted change. In fact, it seems to achieve opposite goals.
The most notable thing about assassins is that for the most part they are mentally ill people with no real agenda, or an agenda that is based on insanity. For example, the man who shot James A. Garfield was basically insane and thought the President had stiffed him our of a job or something. There was no real political thought involved, just a nut with a gun.
The same could be said for John Wilkes Booth - shooting Lincoln after the war was over to no real effect. Kennedy was shot by a guy who went to Russia, came back, and was sort of a layabout. Not sure what the political motive was there, either - unless you believe the conspiracy theories. Squeaky Fromme? Crazy. The guy who shot Reagan? Nutzo. In most cases, the people plotting assassinations are just whack-jobs, not politically motivated people with carefully laid plans.
There are exceptions, of course. Some senior officers, late in the war, tried to assassinate Hitler, too little, too late. It was a carefully planned (but poorly executed) attempt, and the end result was a purge of the military and a retrenchment by Hitler to commit to utter destruction. The assassination attempt achieved the opposite of its goals.
Often, an assassination or an attempt will create sympathy for the victim and allow others to use the tragedy to enact the policies the victim supported. In the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination, much of the "Great Society" legislation was passed in part, to honor him. Reagan bounced back from his assassination attempt with greater approval ratings than before. As his surgeon said, "Sir, today we're all Republicans!"
In other instances, nothing changes as the result of an assassination or attempt. As the cartoon above illustrates, even if Hitler wasn't around, the Nazi party would still have had influence over Germany and perhaps Ernst Röhm or Goebbles or Göring would have taken his place. While authoritarian dictatorships are a cult of personality, the personality can be swapped-out to a successor or an interloper. In fact, that is probably the only time assassination works out for anyone - when a wanna-be dictator kills off his predecessor and assumes power.
Assassination can create a power vacuum as well. We thought getting rid of Saddam Hussein would somehow turn Iraq into a democratic nation founded on freedom. We thought getting rid of the Taliban in Afghanistan would liberate the Afghani people. But faced with the ability to vote for the first time, many people choose to vote to outlaw voting and install another authoritarian government. Nation-building has to come from within.
It is hard to say how the assassination attempt on Trump will change things. No doubt the Trumpers will still thump for Trump. Those alarmed by his authoritarian diatribes will not switch parties based on the attempt. I doubt it will create a sympathy effect other than to bolster the faithful.
If the shooter hadn't missed, what would have happened? It is hard to say, but a State Funeral in the Capital along with a procession to Arlington Cemetery would no doubt have captivated the nation. And maybe that would have translated to a sympathy vote for his successor - whoever that would have been. But predicting "what ifs" is a tricky business.
People are always looking for reasons - motivations, manifestos, tweets, or e-mails that will explain things nice and neatly. Failing that, people will make up motivations so they can compartmentalize these things in their mind. There had to be a cause-and-effect! But causation is illusory. Oftentimes, these are merely random events, a crazy young man with muddled motives and a gun. And that is a scary thought - that at any moment, something bad could happen to any of us.
Perhaps the only real effect of this assassination attempt is to expose the utter hypocrisy of the GOP. The same people who laughed when Gabby Giffords was shot, or made crude jokes when Nancy Pelosi's husband was attacked by a nut with a hammer, are now all "special snowflakes" crying "how dare you?" when someone makes an off-color joke. Worse yet, the party decrying "cancel culture" is patrolling the Internet looking for offense and getting teachers and even Home Depot clerks fired, for making the same sort of jokes they made about Giffords or Pelosi, in order to "own the libs."
The hypocrisy is showing. Even worse is the utter cowardice shown by those on the left, when confronted with this. Jack Black, not wanting to jeopardize the money-train that is the "Kung-Fu Panda" franchise (now four movies and five short films - how is that possible?), threw his band-mate under the bus and dissolved the band to boot. Too late, Black realizes it wasn't enough, as the right has tagged him with the comments and won't let that go, because he has been on their enemies list for some time now.
Doing the "right thing" when it comes to Nazis, only seems to benefit Nazis. The same can be said to be true for Trumpers - although the Venn diagram for those two groups overlaps considerably. Trumpers never have to apologize for their death threats, off-color jokes, or promises of retribution. It is only the left that must humble themselves before the right, as they are shamed and vilified. This is not a new phenomenon, either:
"Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre
