US political climate is on display in Kenosha
National debate, divide, election intersect in city
You might think there’s nothing more routine by now than a presidential visit to Wisconsin.
But there is nothing normal about President Donald Trump’s trip to Kenosha on Tuesday, which is happening:
In the home stretch of an angry and epic presidential campaign.
In a state that could decide the election.
In the middle of a pandemic. On the heels of the two national conventions.
During a debate over race and policing that has drawn massive protests across the country.
In a city reeling after the shooting of a Black man by a white police officer, violent unrest and two shooting deaths involving a white 17-year-old from Illinois armed with an AR-15-style rifle.
In a county Trump won in 2016 by three-tenths of a percentage point in a state he won by eight-tenths of a percentage point — a state that’s a microcosm of America’s partisan chasm, its dysfunctional divided government and the diametrically different responses from the two parties to the tragedy and upheaval in Kenosha.
If the climate of a national election can be distilled in one political moment, this could be it.
And front and center is the most polarizing president of modern times, who proclaimed Monday that he saved Ke
nosha from destruction, while Democrats accused him of using the city as a prop and making things worse.
“If I didn’t INSIST on having the National Guard activate and go into Kenosha, Wisconsin, there would be no Kenosha right now. Also, there would have been great death and injury. I want to thank Law Enforcement and the National Guard. I will see you on Tuesday!” said Trump on Twitter.
“Does anyone believe there will be less violence in America if Donald Trump is reelected?” said his Democratic opponent Joe Biden, who accused Trump of inflaming the nation and responded to GOP criticism of his own position on the protests by condemning violence and looting and saying, “Do I look like a radical socialist with a soft spot for rioters?”
Trump’s visit will bring him to one of the most politically mobilized and partisan states in America, where the working relationship between the parties is in shambles; where the Democratic governor called a special session of the Legislature on policing and GOP legislators ended it Monday less than 30 seconds after it began; where Republican voters last month approved of Trump’s handling of protests 68% to 19% and Democrats disapproved of it 96% to 1%.
Kenosha the city is Democratic. Kenosha the county is a microcosm of the national divide. Its eastern, urban precincts near Lake Michigan are blue. Its exurbs west of I-94 are red. Only when you add the two together do you get purple. It was Wisconsin’s closest county in the 2016 race for president.
The schism in Kenosha and Wisconsin extended even to the president’s visit, which became an instant lightning rod, with state and local Democrats assailing it and state and local Republicans embracing it.
“It’s unfortunate that Donald Trump is making this more about himself — don’t be too surprised — than anything else,” said U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan, DMadison, who doesn’t represent Kenosha but grew up in the city, and whose parents once did business from a storefront that was partially destroyed in the unrest. He said Trump would exacerbate tensions, not ease them.
Bryan Steil, the Republican who represents Kenosha in Congress, credited Trump with quickly responding to his call for more manpower to restore order in Kenosha.
Steil said he expected Trump’s message to be “uplifting” and called the visit “an opportunity for the President to see first-hand and to talk to people firsthand about what transpired, but also about how the community of Kenosha can heal and ultimately rebuild.”
The Republican lawmaker said that while the national debate over Kenosha is politicized, that’s not the case “when I talk to people in Kenosha . ... When events were spiraling out of control, people were looking for help. They didn’t care whether that help came from a Democrat or a Republican or a man on the moon.”
Questions linger
Kenosha this week is at the intersection of enduring social questions as well as immediate election questions.
Is Trump coming to Kenosha too soon?
Has Biden, who is expected to visit the state in the coming days, stayed away from Wisconsin too long?
Are the protests playing into Trump’s “get-tough” messaging and his attacks on the political left?
Is the turmoil turning voters away from the incumbent?
No one really knows right now how Kenosha and the broader issues of race and protests and policing are going to influence this election.
In an August poll conducted by the Marquette University Law School before the shooting of Jacob Blake, public approval of the protests sparked by George Floyd’s death in Minnesota declined from 61% to 48% in Wisconsin.
The biggest declines were among Republicans and voters who live in small towns and rural areas.
But there was little improvement in perceptions of Trump’s handling of the protests: His approval on that issue was 30% in June and 32% in August.
And there was little change in the state of the race in Wisconsin between Biden and Trump: Biden’s lead among likely voters was 6 points in June and 5 points in August.
“So while opinions of the protests appear to be fluid and malleable, they were not connected in a substantial way to evaluations of Trump and his behavior,” said Marquette pollster Charles Franklin, whose first Wisconsin survey to take in the period after the shootings and unrest in Kenosha will be released next week.
Pocan, the Democratic congressman from Dane County, said, “Donald Trump is desperate to have one last issue that diverts people from his horrendous response to COVID. That is ‘law and order.’ The problem is he is doing just the opposite — creating chaos and disorder.”
Trump’s recently departed counselor Kellyanne Conway said last week: “The more chaos and anarchy and vandalism and violence reigns, the better it is for the very clear choice on who’s best on public safety and law and order.”
In Kenosha and beyond this year, chaos is in the eye of the beholder.