Hello,

namaste everyone, and welcome to Inpolitic with John Heilman, my new podcast on politics and culture for

Odyssey and Puck, where I'm the chief political columnist,

crank it out a weekly dispatch that shares its name

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So get on that and then come back over here to the audio prefecture of the

impolitic empire where we drop fresh episodes twice a week every Tuesday

every Friday featuring fresh spirited candy conversations with the people who

room the quarters of power and influence in America shaping our culture and especially our politics.

This week I am in Milwaukee for a Republican National Convention that arrives at an extraordinary moment in what for many, many, many months

had been a tepid, torpid, tedious turnoff of a presidential election, an uninspiring

sequel starring two senescent leading men that the vast majority of the electorate did not want to see

And then out of nowhere and in quick succession two seismic events jolted the race

first Joe Biden's debate debacle in Atlanta nearly three weeks ago and then the heinous, horrifying, nearly tragic

attempt on Donald Trump's life at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on Saturday night.

Suddenly, tens of millions of Americans who'd been studiously averting their eyes from the campaign for months

were watching, wrapped, and talking about little else.

That Trump's brush with death and his swaggering,

clench fist, fight, fight, fight, fight survival

that he pulled off came on the eve of the GOP convention, turned that event into must

...