Joe Biden is on the back foot over US race riots

The Democratic presidential candidate’s reluctance to condemn violent protests will worry swing voters in Middle America

Joe Biden has played down — or even denied — the violent side of the US protests. Picture: AFP

As opinion polls suggest that months of unrest, violence and rising crime in Democratic-controlled cities across the US are starting to erode Joe Biden’s lead in the presidential election campaign, the party’s nominee tried a new tack this week. It seemed to have been inspired in part by Vito Corleone.

In a warning reminiscent of the kind of protection rackets successful mafia bosses, real and fictional, have famously mastered, Biden spoke to a small group of reporters at a rare campaign event in Pittsburgh. After some ritual denunciations of the violence perpetrated by people associated with the Black Lives Matter protests, Biden then asked: “Does anyone believe there will be less violence in America if Donald Trump is elected?”

Roughly translated from the original Sicilian, this means: “Vote for me or your homes and businesses will continue to be burnt and looted.”

Biden’s trip to Pennsylvania was a departure in every sense. The Democrat hadn’t set foot outside his home state of Delaware for weeks. Observing a careful social distance and nursing a comfortable opinion poll lead, the 77-year-old former vice-president had been hoping his Wilmington Basement strategy of masterful inaction would prove as effective in seeing him home to an election victory as US president Franklin D Roosevelt’s Rose Garden strategy once was.

Donald Trump at Mary D. Bradford High School in Kenosha, Wisconsin this week. Picture: AFP

But in a sign of rising alarm inside his campaign at the turn of recent events, Biden was persuaded to put on a mask and venture to neighbouring Pennsylvania on Monday. His mission: to address intensifying voter concern about what’s becoming the dominant election issue — the deteriorating condition of American cities in the grip of political violence.

Deploying the avuncular manner and folksy argot that has served him well over half a century in politics, Biden sought to reassure swing voters. “Do I look like a radical socialist with a soft spot for rioters?” he shrugged, followed by the trademark pearly white grin.

For most of the northern summer Biden and Democratic leaders have played down — or even denied — the violent side of the protests, which has involved attacks on law enforcement, looting and destruction of shops and businesses and rising street crime. Mayors of cities that have seen some of the worst unrest insisted that the protests were completely peaceful.

In the past few weeks, though, the mayhem has become impossible to ignore, with clashes between protesters and counterprotesters that resulted in three deaths in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and Portland, Oregon. While Democrats were strangely almost entirely silent about the unrest at their convention two weeks ago, last week the Republicans hammered home the message at theirs, with testimony from some of the victims of the violence.

Burned-out cars after a night of unrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Picture: AFP

So, having spent three months denying there was anything to see here, as the protests with which Biden has publicly allied himself spawned crime and destruction, and as multiple Democratic mayors urged them on, the party has now decided the violence is a problem after all.

Biden’s new line, though, is this: the fault lies, not with the men and women throwing rocks and petrol bombs at police, burning car dealerships, and helping themselves to the contents of family-owned businesses, but with Trump. “He can’t stop the violence because for years he’s fomented it,” Biden said on Monday.

On cue, the next day Trump visited Kenosha, site of some of the worst rioting, which came after the shooting by police of a black man who appeared to be resisting arrest. He posed for a few photographs amid scenes of war-like destruction, and flew back to Washington.

The Democrats had been hoping that COVID-19 and Trump’s poor record in dealing with it would dominate the election from now until polling day on November 3. But the violence has forced its way now to the forefront of the campaign and the Biden campaign is scrambling to come up with a strategy.

A protester scuffles with a Trump supporter, right, in Kenosha, Wisconsin, this week. Picture: AFP

Blaming Trump for crimes committed by radical, ideologically motivated mobs who are publicly committed to the overthrow of the American capitalist patriarchy is a challenge.

It is true that Trump has used ugly rhetoric and is no one’s idea of a conciliator. The President can’t see a metaphorical fire without pouring fuel on it himself. It is also true that most voters still see the grievances of many of those who have marched in protest these past three months as legitimate.

But they can’t be fooled. They have also watched with mounting revulsion as parts of their cities have been turned into no-go areas by nightly clashes between protesters and police. They have seen diners at restaurants in Washington harassed by crazed BLM protesters intimidating them into Maoist-style public declarations of support. They have seen attendees at Trump’s Republican convention speech last week jostled and threatened by angry crowds as they left the White House.

They have seen all that and heard Democratic mayors and officials in these big cities denounce the police, cut funding for law enforcement, and implement changes to criminal justice that result in people arrested for violent crime immediately being released, uncharged, to offend again and again. All the time, serious crime unrelated to the protests is soaring in many cities as police, confronted with this local political reality, pull back from their jobs.

This is what Democratic rule looks like to many voters, even those who are tired of Trump. No wonder they are thinking twice.

The Times