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They have made it crystal clear that their ire is not constrained to Trump. It regularly spills over to his base, Republicans in general, and even people that just are just not faithfully aligned with Blue Tribe values.
It is astounding reading and watching people act like this is some hot topic of the week that will blow over in a month. Maybe? What I don't see enough chatter about is how Trump voters received a loud and clear message that their deaths and misfortune (not just Trump's!) will be minimized at best and actively celebrated at worst (see also Babbit). As if it matters one bit to me if Crooks was a registered Republican when I subsequently saw how sizable chunks of the Left reacted to it.
This memory will not be going away any time soon.
"The basket of deplorables."
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I'll second this with roystgnr's caveat about it being a lot worse where people like Comperatore are victims, and also point to people who've made similar arguments in other contexts. FCFromSSC has pointed to the celebrations around the murder of Aaron Danielson (and conspiracy theories about the police shooting of his killer), but there were also significant efforts to explain how Lee Keltner or Jessica Doty-Whitaker 'deserved' it, and state prosecutors gleeful that their campaign lead to Jake Gardner's suicide.
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This is much worse than Babbitt.
"It's okay to shoot at a mob engaged in violent breaking-and-entering" would have been a classic conservative talking point if not for the valence of that particular mob. It might have even been considered an especially-conservative talking point; centrists might agree with Niven's "1a) Never throw shit at an armed man." but the "why didn't you aim for the leg" crowd would hesitate at enforcing "1b) Never stand next to someone who is throwing shit at an armed man."
However, "It's okay to shoot at a political rally for the wrong politician" is only defensible if the politician is Actually Literally Hitler, not Hyperbolically Literally Hitler. The election may now be Trump's to lose, now that every anti-Trump campaign message has to thread the needle between "doesn't invoke Godwin's Law at all" (in which case it might not be persuasive, given the alternative and the implicit backpedaling) versus "kinda invokes Godwin's Law" (in which case it looks like irresponsible stochastic terrorism to anybody who isn't already pro-assassination).
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