Kevin M Kruse/WaPo:
Law and order won’t help Trump win reelection
A challenger can call for law and order, but the message falls flat from an incumbent
“Some in the president’s circle see the escalations as a political boon,” the New York Times reported Monday, “much in the way Richard M. Nixon won the presidency on a law-and-order platform after the 1968 riots.”
While the future of American politics is impossible to predict, that statement reveals a serious misreading of the past. This year, Trump may try to replicate the rhetoric of his predecessor’s campaign, but there’s one important aspect he can’t copy — the fact that Nixon, unlike Trump, wasn’t president when he waged it.
That disastrous photo-op was a turning point. The polls will catch up, but it’s there to see.
Robin Givhan/WaPo:
Trump’s photo with his loyalists was a vulgar mess. And Ivanka brought a handbag.
The president could have opened the Bible. He could have read Psalm 23. The Lord is my shepherd. Federal law enforcement had just fired tear gas at peaceful demonstrators, pelted them with rubber bullets and chased them away on horseback. Trump now had the secured space to stand in front of cameras in front of a historic church. And he couldn’t even be bothered to crack the spine on the holy book.
Instead, he corralled members of his staff for a photograph that, in its nightmarish awkwardness, revealed all the ineptitude, cowardliness and pettiness for which the whole charade was a grotesque cover.
That analysis needs to include that how media portrays this (protest vs riot) matters immensely.
Reuters:
Most Americans sympathize with protests, disapprove of Trump's response - Reuters/Ipsos
The survey conducted on Monday and Tuesday found 64% of American adults were “sympathetic to people who are out protesting right now,” while 27% said they were not and 9% were unsure.
The poll underscored the political risks for Trump, who has adopted a hardline approach to the protests and threatened to deploy the U.S. military to quell violent dissent. The Republican president faces Democrat Joe Biden in November’s election.
…
A separate Reuters/Ipsos poll found that Biden’s lead over Trump among registered voters expanded to 10 percentage points - the biggest margin since the former vice president became his party’s presumptive nominee in early April.
Twice as many independent voters said they disapproved of Trump’s response to the unrest. Even among Republicans, only 67% said they approved of the way he had responded, significantly lower than the 82% who liked his overall job performance.
Barack Obama/Medium:
How to Make this Moment the Turning Point for Real Change
Moreover, it’s important for us to understand which levels of government have the biggest impact on our criminal justice system and police practices. When we think about politics, a lot of us focus only on the presidency and the federal government. And yes, we should be fighting to make sure that we have a president, a Congress, a U.S. Justice Department, and a federal judiciary that actually recognize the ongoing, corrosive role that racism plays in our society and want to do something about it. But the elected officials who matter most in reforming police departments and the criminal justice system work at the state and local levels.
CO based pollster:
Jonathan Bernstein/Bloomberg:
Trump’s Re-Election Chances Are Dwindling
The president needs to appeal to voters beyond his strongest supporters. He doesn’t seem to be trying very hard.
If I had to guess, however, I’d say that the Nixon comparisons are off-base. Trump is the incumbent, so he’s not especially apt to pick up the support of undecided voters upset by the status quo. And Nixon was skilled at identifying issues that would put him on the side of large majorities, even at the cost of intensifying social fault lines. Trump is good at the inflaming part, but there’s just no evidence that he has any feel for where majorities are. Instead, while Nixon was willing to ignore “Goldwater conservatives” to appeal to the broad middle of the electorate, Trump specializes in appealing to only his strongest supporters — which since the early days of his presidency has essentially meant the core audience for Fox News and conservative talk radio.
His actions Monday brought home the point.
George Will/WaPo:
Trump must be removed. So must his congressional enablers.
Presidents seeking reelection bask in chants of “Four more years!” This year, however, most Americans — perhaps because they are, as the president predicted, weary from all the winning — might flinch: Four more years of this? The taste of ashes, metaphorical and now literal, dampens enthusiasm.
Josh Marshall/TPM:
Surveying the Whirlwind
In general it is a good rule of thumb that outbreaks of public disorder empower politicians and political movements of right. I definitely worry that it may do the same here. But any confidence that this is the case is misplaced. We are in genuinely unprecedented, unknown territory. The sheer weight and variety and multitude of public crises make the search for historical precedent more desperate and inviting but also more futile. The broken and endangered state of the country as recently as four months ago can be hard to remember and seems almost quaint by comparison to today. But we should be cautious because the moment is truly new.
We are still in the midst of this historical moment in which rising and growing public demands for a more equitable and just society are colliding with a consolidating backlash against them. This is the confrontation that gave us Trumpism and his presidency – inextricably bound up with his brazen and indifferently predatory personality – is only intensifying the conflict. Trump first tried to inflame the violence in his favor. In the last 24 hours, much as he did with COVID, he seems to have gotten tired of the civil conflict and wanted to move onto something more fun – to space launches, judicial nominations, anything. Shortly enough, he’ll return to incitement. It is hard not to look at all of this and not see an escalating gyre of public crises and catastrophes, many of which are not entirely the fault of the President, but all of which are deepened, accentuated and inflamed by his disastrous and cataclysmic presidency.
Anne Applebaum/Atlantic:
History Will Judge the Complicit
Why have Republican leaders abandoned their principles in support of an immoral and dangerous president?
Both men could see the gap between propaganda and reality. Yet one remained an enthusiastic collaborator while the other could not bear the betrayal of his ideals. Why?
Long and very good piece.
David M Drucker/Washington Examiner:
'The problem, of course, is Trump': Republicans worry president will squander opportunity to calm nation amid unrest
Republican insiders say the wave of civil unrest roiling American cities could boost President Trump in his reelection bid against presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden if he can meet the moment with consistent leadership that is measured and reassuring. They doubt he can.
In interviews Monday, more than a half-dozen veteran Republican strategists told the Washington Examiner that the bloody, destructive riots that erupted from coast to coast over the weekend could push voters into Trump's arms. He has cultivated a law-and-order image since the earliest days of his first campaign, and suburban voters who fled the GOP because of a deep dissatisfaction with the president’s provocative style could reconsider amid fresh concerns about domestic security.
But in responding to the social conflagration primarily with a staccato of politically charged tweets, while picking fights with Democratic governors and mayors on the front lines of the mayhem, Republicans fear Trump has reinforced the long-held notion among persuadable voters in the suburbs that he is part of the problem. In so doing, they say, the president is on the verge of squandering a major opportunity to outflank Biden on a key issue.
“If you look at the suburban coalition, they’re not exactly fond of the cities getting torched. The problem, of course, is Trump,” said a Republican lobbyist, who requested anonymity in order to speak candidly about the president.