Milwaukee (AFP) - A bloodied candidate, his fist raised in defiance after surviving an assassination attempt.

It is still early to know what impact the attempt on Donald Trump's life will have on the 2024 White House race, but the image of the former president as he was rushed from the stage of a rally in Pennsylvania has already taken on iconic status.

The great disruptor whom many see as the clear and present threat to democracy and the rule of law has himself become a victim -- and survivor -- of the ultimate act of political violence.

Pennsylvania's Democratic junior senator, John Fetterman, cautioned Sunday that the attack should not become "an opportunity for politics or strategy, or how this might play out."

Yet the dynamics of the Republican Party's national nominating convention, starting Monday in Milwaukee, are sure to be transformed along with the campaign more broadly, as Trump seeks to make hay out of horror.

An often divisive figure but a canny campaigner with unswerving political instincts, Trump took the high ground Sunday as he called for Americans to stand together in "not allowing evil to win." 

He would have expected a ticker-tape parade anyway, but his brush with death ensures near-mythic status among the 50,000 expected attendees in Wisconsin who already see the Republican tycoon as their warrior and champion.

Grievance narrative

Plastered on front pages around the world and spreading virally on social media, the image showing Trump's raised fist against the backdrop of an American flag flying above him will be worth more than even the most lavish ad campaign.

Election messaging is about contrasts and, seizing the moment, Trump demonstrated a courage and fortitude that voters are certain to compare with weeks of disastrous headlines about President Joe Biden's frailty.

Crucially, the attack plays into Trump's grievance narrative about Democrats being out to get his support base, and that he is taking the slings and arrows -- literally, now -- so that they don't have to.

Discussing the impact of the shooting on the convention, Democratic former White House strategist David Axelrod predicted on CNN that Trump would be "greeted as a kind of martyr."

Meanwhile the Republican's adversaries -- wary of being accused of failing to read the room -- are likely to find criticizing the former president a trickier proposition.

Biden has been taking the fight to Trump recently, in an aggressive effort to present his predecessor as a threat to democracy.

It is a message that could fall on deaf ears, though, against a target who barely escaped with his life in an act which many will see as something akin to domestic terrorism. 

The Biden campaign said it was "pausing all outbound communications and working to pull down our television ads as quickly as possible," multiple media outlets reported, in response to the assassination attempt.

Lasting impact?

On the Democratic upside, the attack on Trump solves a more immediate problem for Biden. 

The president has been lambasted for his lackluster debate showing against Trump in Atlanta last month, when he struggled even to finish sentences, let alone articulate a clear case for four more years.

Suddenly days of painful splash headlines for the Democrat have been relegated to the inside pages or swept away entirely, as the parties argue over whose political rhetoric is most to blame for fomenting violence.

Biden's opponents within his own party may also find it hard to mount a serious challenge to his candidacy without appearing nakedly opportunist at a time of national crisis.

In terms of ramifications for the vote itself, it seems obvious that Trump would receive some kind of boost from Americans angered by the shooting, and the anti-Trump rhetoric that many Republicans say contributed to it.  

But the longer term benefit might be more to do with juicing turnout than converting agnostics, according to veteran pollster Frank Luntz.

"In the end, voters will settle down and return to their candidate of choice. The people who move towards Trump out of sympathy will probably move back," he posted on X.

"But what happened in (Pennsylvania) will definitely impact the final vote, guaranteeing that every Trump voter will actually vote."

Luntz believes the participation gap may end up being worth up to two points nationwide, with a more accentuated boost in Pennsylvania, a crucial swing state that Biden needs to defend if he is to have any hope of prevailing in November.

"This doesn't guarantee that Trump flips Pennsylvania. But the long and winding road for Joe Biden just became even longer and windier," Luntz added.