Thursday, August 27, 2020

Rioter, rioter, go away

 

News from the trenches of the New York Times:

Voters are beginning to become alarmed by the wide-scale rioting in several cities and have begun to notice that the cities with the worst problems are run by Democrats.  Poll numbers are thus swinging to the Republicans and away from Democrats.  Even Chris Cuomo and Don Lemon have started to notice, and they, too, have become alarmed and are suggesting that it's time for the riots to stop lest they damage Joe Biden's chances of unseating Donald Trump.

This presents an intriguing problem for Biden who has already promised to get the domestic situation under control if elected in November.  The problem is this: if Biden (or the Democrats generally) issue a call for the rioters to behave themselves, one of two things will happen.  Either the riots will stop, or the riots will continue.

If the riots continue, it makes Biden's promise to calm the troubled waters seem hollow.  If the riots stop, it labels the rioters as Democratic partisans and the Democratic party as the likely source of the unrest that has caused billons (with a 'B') of dollars worth of damage to probable Democratic strongholds.  One path confirms Trump's charge that the Democrats are America-haters, while the other marks them as ineffective braggarts.

I wouldn't want to be in either one of those shoes.