Joe Biden’s new election battleground against Donald Trump
Calls to stop funding America’s police in the wake of George Floyd’s killing have brought a fringe idea into the US presidential election race, leaving Joe Biden with a tough choice.
Leaders
Don't miss out on the headlines from Leaders. Followed categories will be added to My News.
There was a moment last week when what had seemed like a fringe idea suddenly crystallised into a new battleground in America’s presidential election.
The first days of demonstrations after George Floyd’s killing by a white police officer were chaos, with looting, arson and violence in dozens of cities across the country in the worst civil unrest since the 1960s.
But two weeks after Mr Floyd’s death, as clashes settled and the majority of protests became more ordered, a new theme started to gain serious public traction: to defund the police.
The slogan had been chanted, plastered on posters and graffitied on buildings, but now the head of Minneapolis City Council, the city where Mr Floyd was killed, was pushing for it on national TV.
Such a notion is terrifying to many Americans, and CNN interviewer Alisyn Camerota quickly realised this during an interview with Lisa Bender, president of Minneapolis City Council.
“What if in the middle of night, my home is broken into? Who do I call?,” she asked.
Ms Bender replied that she heard that question “loud and clear from a lot of my neighbours. And I know, and myself, too, and I know that that comes from a place of privilege.”
Camerota asked: “Are you worried that you have just handed President Trump a great talking point, or slogan or battle cry for his re-election? To say: ‘see, Democrats want to take away your police?”
Just weeks ago, the November election looked like a referendum on the coronavirus and the rebuilding of America’s shattered economy.
And now, even though Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has tried to distance himself from the message of dismantling police forces, the Trump campaign is successfully painting a number of potential vice presidential picks as supporting this radical movement.
These include Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who said on Tuesday she supported the “spirit” of defunding police.
“You don’t need all the money that’s going to the police departments. So, yeah, I mean, the spirit of it, I do support that spirit of it,” she said.
California Senator Kamala Harris also praised Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti’s decision to cut more than AUD$200 million from the police budget.
Mr Biden said on Wednesday: "I do not support defunding police”, but this came days after he said there was need for reform to address systemic racism, which existed “across the board”.
Donald Trump was applauded at a police reform roundtable in Texas on Thursday, as he asked: “What happens late at night when you make that call to 911 and there’s nobody there? What do you do whether you’re white, black or anybody else?”.
This call for law and order intensified as anarchists declared a police-free “autonomous zone” in Seattle, taking over a police station and reportedly extorting shipowners.
“Take back your city NOW,” he tweeted to Seattle’s Democrat governor and mayor. “If you don’t do it, I will. This is not a game.”
Campaigning on the traditional Republican tenets of law and order, first championed in Richard Nixon’s successful 1968 run for president, would seem to be a relatively safe bet for Mr Trump.
But the unfolding unrest puts the moderate Mr Biden in a tight spot: Hold the middle and he risks alienating the progressive left and young Democratic voters who didn’t turn out in 2016, or jump onto the anti-cop bandwagon and potentially lose the moderates who may hold the keys to the White House.
The fact the Democrats are struggling with how they frame the argument is hurting them, according to conservative commentator Ryan Fournier.
“Are you for fully abolishing the police department and having no law enforcement?,” Mr Fournier told Politico.
“Or are you for taking away some of their funds — which I think is counter-productive because they need more training, they need to do more reform — and then giving it to other resources? I think everybody sits on a different page with that. There has to be a conversation on that because there's many conservatives who think they fully want to get rid of police.”
The most extreme advocates for defunding police are arguing for their abolition, but the term also applies to measures such as diverting funds to crime prevention.
MORE NEWS
Trump slams Biden: ‘He’s not all there’
NYC bars, restaurants defy strict lockdown rules
‘Like a war zone’: Aussie’s inside view of the NY riots
Amazing scenes as protesters, police ‘fist-bump’ in solidarity
Mr Trump is trailing Mr Biden in national polls by an average eight points as preferred president, and by about three per cent in all but one of the five key states that could swing November: Florida, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Arizona.
His approval was down to 41 per cent in polling last week, and while it has hovered in the 40s throughout his first term, there was a key difference in the recent plunge, according to election analyst Geoffrey Skelley from FiveThirtyEight.
“For all the talk of Trump being Teflon Don, he isn’t actually indestructible,” Mr Skelley said.
Trump’s incendiary recent language and controversies such as using force to clear protesters around the White House were potentially hurting him.
“Prior to this downturn, Trump’s approval was actually the highest it had been since he took office in January 2017 — 45 to 46 per cent, on average — likely thanks to a rally-around-the-flag bounce in response to his initial handling of the coronavirus crisis,” he said.
“The downward movement in his approval rating belies the notion that nothing matters when it comes to public opinion of this president — his actions and events can, in fact, affect his standing. And for that reason, his re-election chances could now be in real danger.”
This notion is not supported by conservatives, who are counting on Trump’s rusted-on base to stick by its man.
Even the very few Republicans who have openly criticised him will also likely continue to tiptoe around the president in order to hold their own vote come November.
“There’s no middle ground to run to anymore,” said Brendan Buck, a former Adviser to the past two Republican House speakers, in The Washington Post.
“There’s really no political upside to running away from (Trump). You gain nothing and you raise the ire of not just the president but people who support him.”
Originally published as Joe Biden’s new election battleground against Donald Trump