TORN IN THE USA
Alison Rowat on the election blame game and a divided nation at war with itself
MORE than 900 Americans dying every day from coronavirus, the economy in shock, Congress at a standstill. With the demands on President Trump mounting by the hour, his decision to visit Kenosha tomorrow is significant.
The Wisconsin city is where Jacob Blake, a black man, was shot in the back seven times by a police officer. Mr Blake, 29, was trying to get back into his car where his three children were sitting when the shots were fired. He has been left paralysed from the waist down. During the protests that followed, armed vigilantes took to the streets and two men died.
While Mr Trump has said he “didn’t like the sight” of Mr Blake’s shooting, he has otherwise kept his counsel.
But he spent last week at the Republican National Convention condemning the anti-racism protests that have taken place across America following the shooting dead of George Floyd in Minneapolis, calling marchers “anarchists, agitators, rioters, looters and flag burners”.
In Kenosha a meeting with police officers and a tour of the area is on the schedule. It is not yet clear if the President will sit down with Mr Blake’s family.
Given his record, one would have to be an optimist of the hardiest kind to imagine that Mr Trump’s intervention in Kenosha will help matters rather than hinder.
In Portland, Oregon, scene of three months of protests, he sent in federal troops.
Over the weekend, he directed a tweet at Portland’s Democrat mayor, Ted Wheeler, threatening to do so again: “Kenosha has been very quiet for the third night in a row or, since the National
Guard has shown up. That’s the way it works, it’s all very simple. Portland, with a very ungifted mayor, should request help from the Federal Government. If lives are endangered, we’re going in!”
Mr Wheeler demanded the President stay away, telling him: “We know you’ve reached the conclusion that images of violence or vandalism are your only ticket to re-election.”
A man was killed in Portland on Saturday during clashes between pro and anti Trump protesters.
Mr Wheeler is hardly alone in concluding that Mr Trump plans to win a second term on the back of a campaign with law and order at its core. It was not supposed to be this way. A booming economy was his ticket to re-election. Then the virus arrived and the rest is painful, still being written, history.
The question is what kind of law and order campaign he will wage. He might follow the game plan of George HW Bush in 1988: deride his opponent as being soft on crime, use his past record against him, and watch an already weak campaign fall apart. Or he could get down and even dirtier with the Nixon playbook from 1968, running campaign ads filled with scenes of rioting and the message: “I pledge to you: We shall have order in the United States.”
The trouble with the latter strategy, as pointed out in a Washington Post piece by Kevin Kruse, professor of history at Princeton, is that Nixon was the challenger. America’s cities are burning on Mr Trump’s watch.
Frank Luntz, the Republican pollster, also has doubts about the law and order strategy, particularly as it is tied to the
Black Lives Matters protests. “The public supports the protests, they support Black Lives Matter (BLM) and they support the police. You can keep all three thoughts in your mind at the same time,” he told the Financial Times.
For Mr Trump, everything depends on what voters, particularly women, see as the greatest threat to their wellbeing. Is it unrest in some cities, or is it the continuing and crippling consequences from the mishandling of the coronavirus crisis, which the Democrats will lay squarely at his door?
Even if Mr Trump doubles down on law and order, his opponents will accuse him of inflaming the situation, and they have plenty of footage, including the tear gassing of peaceful protesters in Washington DC to back up their case.
When Mr Trump arrives in Kenosha it will be nine weeks exactly till election day. Plenty of time for the mood to turn against protesters, particularly if there is a repeat of a scene showing a diner being harangued for not raising her fist in solidarity (it later emerged she was a supporter of BLM).
The clock is also ticking towards the televised debates between Mr Trump and Joe Biden, to take place between September 29 and October 22. The Trump campaign is banking on Mr Biden stumbling under pressure.
This has already been one of the most chaotic run-ups to a presidential election campaign in memory, and not just because of the pandemic. With armed vigilantes taking to the streets against protesters the situation can only grow uglier as November 3 approaches.
What state America will be in come November 4 is yet another item to add to a mountain of fears.