President Trump and Republicans for some reason think calling Joe Biden a “socialist” is a sure winner for the election (just as Mitt Romney thought in 2012). Meanwhile, there’s a golden ticket lying on the ground that they refuse to pick up called “the Black Lives Matter riots.”
Sympathy for the Black Lives Matter movement is crippling among white voters (whom Trump relies on). For the third month in a row, we are seeing cities go up in literal flames as rioters, arsonists, and looters continue torching businesses and government buildings across the United States.
One of the cities affected is Kenosha, Wisconsin, where chaos sparked anew this week after a black man was shot several times by a white police officer trying to subdue him. The New York Times reported Wednesday on the effect that the unrest is having on voters there. “In Kenosha County, where the president won by fewer than 250 votes in 2016, those who already supported Mr. Trump said in interviews that the events of the past few days have simply reinforced their conviction that he is the man for the job,” the report said. “But some voters who were less sure of their choice said the chaos in their city and the inability of elected leaders to stop it were currently nudging them toward the Republicans.”
A new poll of just Wisconsinites showed that since June, support for the Black Lives Matter movement has flatlined, going from a net positive of 25 points among whites to less than zero.
Sentiment is shifting on a national level as well. The survey and data-crunching website FiveThirtyEight wrote last week that “unfavorable views of the police are trending back down toward their pre-protest levels among white Americans and have dipped among Black Americans.” It added, “White respondents are also becoming somewhat less likely to say that African Americans face ‘a lot’ or ‘a great deal’ of discrimination.”
There’s no convincing me that this isn’t a reaction to the abhorrent conduct of far too many protesters, who interpreted a heightened moment of sensitivity for black people as license to destroy property and rob small-business owners. No less important is the fact that liberals in the media, who have all but encouraged the madness (if they even acknowledged it), saw an opportunity for police reform as an opening to push for completely unrelated things such as reparations and mandatory racial quotas.
Trump has indicated that he’s at least sort of aware that the issue benefits him politically, and yet, so far, he is utterly failing to exploit it. The Black Lives Matter wildfire is his golden ticket, but it only works if he picks it up.
