As major U.S. cities are engulfed in flames amid mass rioting and looting, there has been a default argument people have been making that this will play right into President Trump’s hands and give a boost to his reelection prospects. But I’m not so sure.

The argument that it helps him is that the urban unrest we’re seeing, and the fact that Democrats have been reluctant to condemn it, will energize the sort of swing state white voters that Trump requires for his reelection. The riots of 1968, for example, helped rescue Richard Nixon from political oblivion and vault him to the White House.