President Donald Trump dragged criminal justice and law-and-order issues back to center stage.
The presidential campaign has shifted its focus from COVID-19 to crime. More accurately, this is the week President Donald Trump dragged criminal justice and law-and-order issues back to center stage. How Democratic nominee Joe Biden responds to this challenge could define the election’s outcome. In the spring, the nationwide demonstrations that spread in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death while in police custody put Trump on the defensive, as the national conversation focused on questions of racial justice, and initial polling showed most Americans did not approve of the way their president was addressing these concerns. But as summer wore on and unrest continued in Portland, Seattle and other cities, those same polls showed Trump gradually gaining ground, then surpassing Biden on the question of which candidate would be more successful at subduing violent crime. As the calendar now turns to fall, the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha,Wis., has greatly intensified the spotlight on these questions. The timing of the shooting and the subsequent protests enabled Trump to use his party’s convention to highlight his side of the argument for several days, with minimal pushback from Biden’s campaign. But it’s now clear both candidates are engaging in this debate with all the force their respective camps can muster. Trump understands that public safety issues are the best remaining hope he has of winning back older voters and suburbanites who have moved away from him over the course of the coronavirus pandemic; and conflating peaceful protestors with rioters and looters would be the most effective way of convincing them to return.
