President Trump and his campaign are seizing on anger over a black man being shot by a white police officer in Wisconsin to help shore up his support nationwide and in the crucial battleground state against 2020 Democratic standard-bearer Joe Biden.
Trump and his allies, including Vice President Mike Pence, repeatedly told potential voters watching the 2020 Republican National Convention this week that they wouldn’t be safer if Biden takes back the White House this fall.
Trump and his team used the convention to tout the administration’s law and order credentials amid civil unrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, after the shooting. And during his hourlong renomination acceptance speech Thursday, Trump capped the four-day GOP pep rally by contrasting Republicans’ tough stance against race-related riots and looting with the Democrats’ messaging. The president, in particular, ripped Biden for not addressing the issue during his convention, though the two-term vice president has condemned violence on both sides.
The Trump camp seems convinced it can win over suburban white women with the president’s rhetoric. Their political calculus, however, was complicated by a 17-year-old white male, a vigilante from Illinois, who this week was charged with first-degree intentional homicide after he allegedly crossed the border to Kenosha and fatally shot two protesters, wounding another. At the same time, Biden and his aides could lose their sway with the voting bloc if they don’t better balance their racial justice push with understanding the public safety talking points’ pull for the demographic.
Barry Burden, director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Elections Research Center, told the Washington Examiner it wasn’t clear if events like Kenosha would assist Trump before the Nov. 3 general election.
“They definitely will not help Biden,” he said.
Jacob Blake, 29, is still in hospital after he was shot seven times in the back last weekend by seven-year Kenosha Police Department veteran Rusten Sheskey. Sheskey and a couple of his colleagues had been trying to arrest Blake while responding to a domestic dispute. Initial reports indicate Blake told them he had a knife.
The turmoil in Kenosha follows a summer of discontent after George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis. But it appears biracial support of the protests, spurred by footage of a white officer kneeling on Floyd’s neck for nine minutes, is dissipating — at least in Wisconsin.
Although conducted before the Kenosha tumult, Marquette Law School polling released this week found public opinion of the demonstrations had dropped from 61% approval and 36% disapproval in June to 48% approval and 48% disapproval in August. While support among black respondents and those who live in the city of Milwaukee held steady, it declined among white respondents and those who call the state’s suburbs, exurbs, towns, and rural areas home.
For Burden, attitudes in Wisconsin started to shift after two statues near the state capitol building in Madison were toppled. Yet he predicted they would morph again after the Blake incident.
“The video is reminding viewers of what sparked the protests in the first place. But there are also calls for ‘law and order’ in Kenosha and elsewhere, and many National Guard members are being deployed,” he said. “Meanwhile, the NBA strike being led by the Milwaukee Bucks has gotten a lot of attention and has elevated the situation so that it cannot easily be seen as being about opportunistic looters breaking storefronts rather than a broader effort at racial justice.”
Democratic Wisconsin state Rep. David Bowen believed the polling reflected a desire to return to normal, though he added the Black Lives Matter movement’s aim was “to irritate and agitate people so that they don’t forget that they have to fix this.” He questioned, too, whether Trump was portraying demonstrators as “enemies” and “criminals” to create problems he could fix “later down the line.”
Bowen acknowledged Kenosha could politically hurt Biden in the short-term. Yet with the election still 70 days away, he implored Biden to continue making amends for the 1994 crime bill and “champion” this cause, especially since there’s a perception he won’t embrace all the reforms activists are proposing.
“Those same suburban white women weren’t fooled in 2018 when they voted as part of the wave that gave Wisconsin all statewide elected positions, the same wave that took over the House,” he said of Trump’s strategy. “He’s underestimating the damage that he’s doing.”
If the 2020 election unfolds like the 2016 contest, the next president will be decided by either Michigan, Pennsylvania, or Wisconsin. And four years ago, Wisconsin was the tipping-point state, gifting Trump the 10 electoral votes he needed to clinch an Electoral College majority.
After the conventions, Biden leads in Wisconsin by an average of 6.2 percentage points, according to FiveThirtyEight. RealClearPolitics data reveals a closer race, the pair separated by only 3.5 points.
The Trump campaign’s tactic was candidly articulated this week by outgoing White House counselor Kellyanne Conway.
“The more chaos and anarchy and vandalism and violence reigns, the better it is for the very clear choice on who’s best on public safety and law and order,” she told reporters.
Biden, in his reply, accused Trump of “rooting for more violence” because he saw it as “a political benefit.”
“The part that bothers me the most is the idea of just pouring gasoline on the racial flames that are burning now. That does not justify any of the looting, any of the burning, any of the damage being done by protesters, but the people have a right to be angry, people have a right to protest,” he said.
