As someone indicated below, he’s now a living martyr. I would place money that he uses this to galvanize his following and it actually benefits him in the polls.
He needed to die in an embarrassing way (lethal dose of ex-lax?) for it to hurt his reputation.
I don’t buy the ‘pave the way for someone worse’ argument. Who would that be? I can’t think of anyone right now, except for maybe De Santis in terms of actually being somewhat competent.