Trump pins hopes on Nixon’s ‘silent majority’ in call to the suburbs

Half a century ago, Richard Nixon appealed to the “great silent majority” who were sick of riots and chaos, and wanted order and normality restored.

In the wake of George Floyd’s death and widespread, sometimes violent, protests, Donald Trump has issued the same clarion call to the suburbs.

The president is trailing Democratic candidate Joe Biden by 10 points in an average of recent polls – double the gap of April – and Mr Trump’s approval rating has plunged six points, to 43 per cent, since last month.

The question now is, do the Nixonian hordes of quiet Americans still exist, and will they roar again for Mr Trump in 2020?

If they do, then there is no more likely place to find them than Manassas, the sleepy county seat of Prince William County in Virginia.

Here, people are not venting on Twitter, nor marching in the streets. Instead, they would just prefer things to be as they have always been.

“Yes,” said Scott Schiflett, 49, when asked if he belonged to the “silent majority”.

“I’d say most of us are hard-working people. We want work, and we don’t want violence. I understand everyone being upset [about Mr Floyd]. I’m upset about it, too. But I don’t believe it’s a reason to tear down your own city,” he said.

“America’s all about the First Amendment, and protests, but I hate seeing the looting.”

Mr Schiflett, a machinist, claimed he had previously voted for Barack Obama, but felt let down, and would support Mr Trump in November.

“If Trump says he’s going to fix this, I stand with him. He’s a capitalist and I’m happy with him,” he said. “I don’t agree with sending in the military, though. I think there are a lot of others [like me]. But you can’t go around wearing a Trump hat. You might get hurt.”

In this quiet backwater, a predominantly white city of 40,000 people, Mr Trump’s claim to be the “president of law and order” has resonated all the more because, while the focus has been on New York and Washington, violence has also come very unexpectedly to Manassas.

Following Mr Floyd’s death, a local police officer was hit in the head with a brick, and his colleagues fired rubber bullets and tear gas. A local newspaper ran the headline “Hell in Manassas”.

At the Glory Days Grill restaurant, they are still clearing up the mess left by vandals and looters.

“There’s never been anything like this here,” said John Castle, 49, the general manager. “There was a group of about 40 people. They threw rocks through our windows, they broke into Walmart across the street.

“Apparently, they were planning to storm the police station down the road. A lot of our customers are older and were just hoping to get over Covid and get back to some sort of normality, and now this. They just want the protests to go away.”

He said the community backed its police, adding: “I haven’t heard anything about police brutality.”

Similar outbreaks of violence have been happening, below the national and global news radar, in towns and cities across Virginia.

In Fredericksburg, the boyhood home of George Washington, there was an attempted firebombing of the police station. Officers deployed tear gas, and there was a standoff.

Virginia Beach, a holiday resort, saw 50 businesses attacked, rubbish bins set on fire, and police using tear gas. In Virginia’s capital, Richmond, a statue of Robert E Lee, the Confederate general, has been ordered removed by the Democrat governor after becoming a focal point for protest.

Asked if there was a growing “silent majority” for Mr Trump, one Manassas resident said: “Yes. The Left are saying the same thing, that the black community is the silent majority for the Democrats and going to vote in numbers. But I predict the Trump silent majority is bigger.

“I think Trump’s base is growing. People say, ‘Oh the protests are peaceful.’ They say that, until they’re at your front door stealing your stuff.

“The media claims Joe Biden is the leader in polls, but it’s just playing the same card as last time. Lie, lie lie.”

Mr Trump has his eye on Virginia, after losing by only five points to Hillary Clinton in 2016. Mrs Clinton had a Virginian senator, Tim Kaine, as her running mate.

The state was Democrat in 1964, but voted for Nixon’s law and order platform in 1968 and 1972.

As both parties’ strategists assess whether Mr Trump will be able to capitalise on the recent chaos the work of a Princeton professor has come to the fore, and suggests he can.

Prof Omar Wasow researched 137 protests that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr in April 1968. He found that counties near where protests had turned violent swung by six to eight percentage points to Nixon. “There are people [moderate Democrats] who are turned off by Trump, but who have a strong taste for order,” he said.

However, Larry Sabato, director of the Centre for Politics at the University of Virginia, said the Nixonian “silent majority” was no longer there for Mr Trump to reach.

“There’s been a tremendous diversification of the electorate since Nixon,” he said. “Back then, whites were 85 to 88 per cent of the voting population. Today, it’s 70 per cent.

“Trump’s not going to win over any Democrats like this. I just don’t think it will work.

“And Nixon wasn’t the incumbent. He was running against a Democrat administration that had failed. Trump can’t blame Biden for the problems.”

However, Mr Trump’s campaign remains convinced there are millions of middle and working class Americans who did not vote in 2016, but might be persuaded this time.

“SILENT MAJORITY!” the president wrote on Twitter this week. Although it’s unlikely many of the silent majority actually read the tweet.