Jarlner: The United States is facing its biggest political drama in recent times

DThis week may go down as one of the most dramatic weeks in recent US political history. A week of tragedy and triumph. A week of dramas that are hardly over. And a week when the political benchmarks are also changing.

At one end of the scale, it was the story of an age-weakened democratic president who, in the form of Joe Biden, had to physically isolate himself somewhere in Delaware after being infected with covid. All the while the outside world also began to isolate him politically and accelerate a stealthy regicide.

And at the other end, his challenger, former president Donald Trump, stepped forward on Friday night at a Republican party convention, where he bathed in balloons and floodlights and allowed himself to be named as the party’s almost overwhelming bid for a new president.

Because after the shooting attack against him in Butler County, Pennsylvania, just six days ago, Trump’s supporters at the convention in Milwaukee were not the only ones with sympathy patches over one ear. They also hailed Trump as an indomitable warrior in a democracy he himself plunged into a historic crisis less than four years ago with his lies about a stolen election victory.