SMOLENS Can safety be promised?

facing the United States, far behind the coronavirus pandemic, economy and health care.

An earlier Pew Research Center survey had those issues in similar order in a poll assessing what factors voters will consider in voting for a presidential candidate. Violent crime may be a handful of rungs down on the Pew survey list, but concern about it is still intense. Nearly 6 in 10 voters said violent crime is “very important” to who they will vote for. For context, 79 percent felt that way about the economy.

Republicans had a 4point

edge over Democrats in the Pew poll on the question of who would do a better job with law enforcement and criminal justice.

Trump is portraying violence and rioting as more widespread than it is. The protests nationwide have been overwhelmingly peaceful. About 93 percent of the social-justice protests across the country this summer remained peaceful and nondestructive, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, which collects data on protests and political violence around the world.

Certain areas have experienced more frequent protest-related violence, notably in Portland, while others have had little or none.

Beyond protests, homicides have spiked in several major U.S. cities. But in New

York and Chicago, two cities often cited for the increase in murders, the overall violent crime rate is a tick below where it was at this time last year, according to the BBC.

Statistics aside, there’s clearly trouble in the streets. When people are being killed, buildings burned and mayors being chased from their homes (as in Portland and St. Louis) amid civil strife, not addressing it would seem unwise. That appears to be the conclusion of the Biden campaign.

Weeks ago, the Trump campaign began airing ads about rioting and looting. One ad, with images of buildings burning and people breaking windows, says “violent crime has exploded.” Superimposed across the seemingly dystopian scene are the words “You won’t be safe in Joe

Biden’s America. ”

The ad is similar to one aired by presidential candidate Richard Nixon in 1968, whose law-and-order campaign helped him win the White House. In addition to scenes of riots, burned-out buildings and protests, the ad had a brief image of marchers carrying a red banner with the word “Socialism” on it.

Trump has repeatedly accused Biden and the Democrats of trying to spread socialism across the United States. His recent threat to take federal money away from “anarchist” cities harkens back to another presidential candidate — George Wallace.

The segregationist governor of Alabama and fourtime presidential candidate in 1964 denounced court decisions that “give aid and comfort to agitators, to

anarchists, to atheists. . . ,” according to a newspaper clipping from that year.

In 1968, Wallace also waged a law-and-order campaign for president, pledging “I will stand up for your local police.“

Trump and his campaign are using familiar themes and rhetoric of campaigns past. But whether he can convince a broad swath of voters they are threatened by crime, riots and anarchy remains to be seen.

The turmoil of 2020 is nothing like the upheaval in 1968, when the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated, demonstrators and police clashed violently outside the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, and protests against the Vietnam War continued.

But for all his erratic moments, Trump is good at messaging. He already has diverted some attention from the coronavirus pandemic, though critics contend he is doing that through hyped-up fear of crime while stoking racial divisions.

Tweet of the Week

Goes to Sara Libby, (@Saralibby), managing editor of Voice of San Diego.

“The state Senate leader failed to get her own housing bill over the finish line. A supermajority-dem Legislature couldn’t pass police reforms. National outlets are decrying why a nursing mom was forced to vote in person. Not a great end of session for California Dems.”