How the Black Lives Matter protests could help Trump win

The Black Lives Matter movement could sink the Democrats and ensure Donald Trump’s reelection. If I had made that statement a few weeks ago, you might have thought me mad. After the police killing of George Floyd on May 25, the world was horrified. The Democratic Party made considerable political hay from massive and widespread protests and riots which followed. Joe Biden, still then the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, and his top allies all firmly aligned themselves with BLM. They repeated BLM slogans, took the knee, demanded radical change – then enjoyed a surge in the polls. Now, however, we are approaching the end of August, the riots haven’t stopped, and the Democrats’ embrace of BLM is starting to look like a monumental mistake. Every night, across America, cars and shops are being smashed or set alight and property defaced with graffiti saying “BLM”. The worst affected areas, in cities such as Portland, Oregon or Seattle, Washington, now resemble war zones.

American voters are sickened by videos of police killing black citizens. But they are also increasingly disgusted by endless images of carnage and they are disturbed by the radical BLM blather that senior Democrats seem much too keen to echo. Every sane person agrees that black lives matter, but BLM’S other big slogan, Defund the Police, starts to sound like madness when homicide rates are spiking and maniacs exploit the lawlessness. BLM spokesmen often encourage violence, threatening to burn places down if they don’t get what they want.

Voters find that off-putting. An interesting new Civiqs survey shows that, in the immediate aftermath of Floyd’s death, support for BLM surged among non-college educated white people in crucial election battleground states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania and

Michigan. By the end of July, a majority of those same voters said they opposed the movement.

Biden finally took to Twitter this week to say that “burning down communities is not protest, it’s needless violence”. But that sounded a lot like too little too late.

In 1972, Richard Nixon, a president less loved than perhaps even Donald Trump, managed to win his second term in a landslide by campaigning against crime and social decay.

Who knows what will happen in this mad year, but the widespread sense of BLM anarchy has given Trump’s campaign an impetus it had hitherto lacked.

The BLM riots have also validated the other big Republican point: the media’s perception of what is happening in America is hopelessly warped by its Left-wing perspective and its loathing of Donald Trump.

Over the weekend, the disturbing clip of a policeman shooting a black man, Jacob Blake, emerged from Kenosha, Wisconsin. A CNN reporter covering the unrest was filmed standing in front of a raging street fire as the caption on screen below him called the protests “largely peaceful”.

People aren’t stupid. The Democrats could learn an old lesson the hard way. Don’t play with fire. You might get burned.