Palestinian supporters protest outside a meeting of Biden administration officials with leaders in Michigan's Arab American community, in Dearborn, Mich., on Feb. 8.NICK HAGEN/The New York Times News Service
In an ordinary time, and in an ordinary presidential election involving customary American political figures, Israel’s killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar might be a game-changer – an October surprise.
But this is no ordinary time, nor an ordinary presidential election, and the very prospect of an October surprise – a last-minute event or revelation that upends the race before election day – seems unlikely in a campaign that has long appeared to be fixed in place. Even extraordinary events have had little power to nudge the race onto a new trajectory.
After Mr. Sinwar’s death, which Israel says happened in a firefight with its troops on Wednesday, there was a brief moment when there seemed to be a possibility of a bright light at the end of the seemingly interminable tunnel of Middle East violence. The current conflict began more than a year ago with Hamas’s invasion of Israel, and it is now in danger of growing into a wider and even more lethal war. This series of events has already shaped the 2024 presidential election.
But Israel and Hamas swiftly squelched hopes for a quick resolution. At the same time, they extinguished the prospect that the death of Mr. Sinwar could be that rare type of event that transcends hemispheres, alters the narrative and changes the course of a presidential race.
The two forces’ apparent intransigence, plus the ability of former president Donald Trump to defy the customary physics of politics, has dampened Vice-President Kamala Harris’s hopes that there might be an opening for her. A breakthrough in the Middle East would perhaps improve her prospects in Michigan, where a bloc of Muslim and Arab-American voters are imperilling the “blue wall” of swing states whose support she needs to win the November election.
A parallel factor: The invulnerability of Mr. Trump to changes in his popularity among his core supporters, and among those Republicans who view him as a safer, more conservative alternative to Ms. Harris.
In recent weeks alone, Mr. Trump has faced the revelation that he sent COVID-19 tests to Russian President Vladimir Putin. He has also amplified his rhetoric about seeking legal punishment for his opponents; redoubled his claims that the Jan. 6, 2021, uprising at the Capitol was a peaceful gathering of patriots and a “day of love”; and increasingly employed vulgar language on the campaign trail. None of it has budged his poll ratings.
For decades, American candidates, strategists, pollsters and analysts have speculated about the transformative power of an “October surprise,” a term coined by the wary William Casey, who was the manager of Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign and was appointed director of central intelligence by Mr. Reagan. In either of those roles, he would have delighted in the convergence of circumstances this week in Gaza and in the seven swing states of this election.
Mr. Casey’s concern was that a late development in the Iran hostage crisis, a major issue in the Reagan campaign’s effort to portray president Jimmy Carter as a feckless, ineffective chief executive, would alter the former California governor’s glide path to the White House. There was no such breakthrough, and in fact the hostages were not released until the following January, the very day that Mr. Reagan took the oath of office and became the 40th president.
There were October surprises before Mr. Casey gave such events a name. But they seldom changed the course of a campaign.
The most famous modern one came in 1968, when another vice-president seeking to succeed a retiring chief executive, Hubert Humphrey, faced Richard Nixon in a bitter contest where the conduct of the Vietnam War was a principal issue.
On Oct. 31 of that year, president Lyndon Johnson ordered a halt to the bombing of North Vietnam. Analysts rushed to declare that development a turning point in a campaign that, like this one, seemed at an impasse. Mr. Humphrey’s hopes soared higher than his poll ratings and, eventually, higher than his harvest of votes. Mr. Nixon won the election and the war wound down only slowly.
There were twin surprises, both occurring in late October, 1956, when Dwight Eisenhower was running for re-election. But the Suez Crisis and the Soviet repression of the Hungarian revolution failed to lift Adlai Stevenson to the presidency. The country wanted the steady hand of Mr. Eisenhower at the helm during that upheaval.
One case where an October surprise did make a difference came in 1884, when a Presbyterian minister, Samuel Burchard, characterized the Democrats as the party of “rum, Romanism and rebellion.” James G. Blaine, known as the “continental liar from the State of Maine,” was the Republican candidate against Democrat Grover Cleveland, himself tarred by reports that he had fathered a child out of wedlock.
Amid a combative, scandal-ridden campaign, Mr. Blaine hesitated in condemning the “rum, Romanism and rebellion” remark, a political gaffe that alienated Catholic voters and became one of the factors that led to the Cleveland victory.
A late-campaign episode involving Mr. Trump didn’t derail his first presidential bid – another sign that he is impervious to the threats that would doom other candidates. It came eight years ago, with the disclosure of the Access Hollywood tape, in which he spoke of his delight in grabbing the intimate organs of women. It made no permanent dent in his popularity. He won the 2016 election weeks later.