The political Left apparently can’t restrain its own radicalism. Having watched President Trump dig himself a massive hole with his own indecency and incompetence, the Left is filling the hole back up for him with its appalling, cowardly indifference to public order.
The refusal of almost every important left-of-center public figure forcefully to renounce vandalism, rioting, and violence is playing into Trump’s hands. The Left’s political job right now is simple. Joe Biden, for a while, was doing it well. That job was to stay out of Trump’s way while he self-immolates.
But the Left has such a soft spot for (nonconservative) protesters that it always seems willing to justify even abhorrent behavior if leftists think the “cause” is right. Not only that, but unlike most traditional (rather than hard-right) conservatives, almost everyone left of center seems to see protests in an almost romantic light, so that there’s a greater thrill for each level of greater expression of indignation and anger — even if, or perhaps even because, the expression or protest becomes destructive.
This is the old “radical chic” attitude that still sees Che Guevara as a hero, that excuses Bill Ayers for his bombings, and that pardons the head of the FALN Puerto Rican terrorists. Now it sides with the Portland rioters even as they destroy federal property and assault the police. The liberals were siding with the rioters even before Trump gave them reason to complain by taking dubious means to quell the riots. They were siding with the rioters because they think this American society is benighted, malicious, and malignant, and so, bygosh (but usually with words far more vulgar than “bygosh”), the authorities deserve what they are getting.
You gotta crack eggs to make an omelet, right? Well, then, why not crack a few windows, or even a few policemen’s heads, to make clear your rage at the machine?
If they want to beat Trump this fall, this is exactly the wrong attitude. For several months, due to Trump’s ineptness and insensitivity (and worse), Democrats had been attracting the swing voters who will decide the fate of the election — the suburban soccer moms, retirees worried about the coronavirus, Hispanic blue-collar workers who see themselves just as threatened by police harassment as black Americans. These same voters, however, also want order and safety. They think peaceful protests are fine, but they don’t like violence. They already are stressed by a virus and economic pressures, and the last thing they want is for their cities to be torched and looted, their streets unpoliced against resurgent crime.
If Trump is the president of divisiveness and unstable leadership, exhausting Middle America with his constant soap opera, he will lose. But if he is the last bulwark against radical rioters, the last hope for law and order, he could still win.
The best thing Biden has going for him, politically, is his promise of at least a semi-moderate return to “normalcy.” He offers safety amid Trump’s incessant storms. Yet if Democrats come to be associated with unrest, crime, and violence, Biden at best will be seen as weakly unable to control his own side, and perhaps complicit in its excesses.
Biden, Barack Obama, the Clintons, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and every other prominent Democrat should now be acting in concert to quell the mobs, to urge that supposedly righteous protests be channeled into actions that are constructive rather than destructive. Otherwise, the Democrats will lose again, and they will have deserved the loss.
