The Democrats have been playing with fire for months like foolish, thoughtless kids playing with matches in the hayloft of a barn.
Yet now that the barn is burning around Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, they’re in full panic mode, trying to put that fire out.
President Donald Trump seeks to take advantage, rightfully wrapping urban violence and Democratic calls to defund police around Biden’s candidacy. Will it hurt Biden in key suburban precincts of vital battleground states like Wisconsin?
It could. And the prospect has caused great wailing and teeth-gnashing among liberal media.
“This rioting has to stop,” said CNN’s Don Lemon. “It’s showing up in the polling. It’s showing up in focus groups. It’s the only thing right now that is sticking (for the Republicans).”
You think so, Don? Really?
But if this weren’t hurting Biden and just hurting, say, shopkeepers in Kenosha and the residents there, and ruining their livelihoods, making them fearful, would we see such media anxiety?
Would The New York Times admonish rioters if the violence didn’t give Trump the high ground in battleground states?
No. Urban violence has been going on for months. But now the worry sets in.
David Marcus in “The Federalist” has a good piece on this, headlined “Democrats are freaking out, and they should be.”
Mark Hemingway also focuses on it in a column I read on RealClearPolitics.com: “Protest Violence and the See-No-Evil Media.”
Not all journalists have ignored the cost on lives and livelihoods destroyed. But the most nakedly partisan media outlets are beside themselves. Liberal pundits have curled up in their fetal default position to concentrate on Orange Man Bad, to keep Kenosha out of mind.
CNN is a prime example of the new liberal media anxiety now that the violence threatens Biden’s candidacy. CNN has become one of several pro-Democrat news shops, just as Fox News leans Republican. The other evening, as fires and riots raged in Kenosha — in a Midwestern swing state vital for presidential candidates — CNN twisted itself into a ridiculous knot and became a clown show.
As a CNN crew broadcast footage of Kenosha on fire, a CNN headline on screen assured viewers that it was “fiery but mostly peaceful.”
Fiery but mostly peaceful, CNN?
And somewhere, the donkeys break wind.
America see the fires too, and looting, in cities across the country, as aggressive mobs of the left. The shock troops of the Democrats in 2020 impose their brand of intimidation on liberal cities run by liberal Democratic mayors.
I think most Americans initially supported the protests that objected to police brutality against Black citizens. But most Americans don’t support arson, looting and deadly mayhem. They question why cops weren’t ordered to shut down the violence immediately and why mayors didn’t call on the National Guard or ask for federal assistance. But Democratic mayors sought to appease the mobs. Taxpayers watched their cities get trashed and looted in Chicago, Portland, New York, St. Louis, Kenosha and elsewhere.
Some mayors, like Chicago’s Lori Lightfoot, eventually called the perpetrators criminals. But Biden and the national Democrats were fearful of insulting their street brigades and said nothing at the Democratic National Convention about the cities that burned. Nothing.
After Lemon and other Biden champions begged to protect the politics, Biden did come out with a lukewarm denunciation, weak, like throwing a cup of water on a burning police car.
But the mobs were quite busy on the streets of Washington, D.C., after Trump accepted the Republican presidential nomination in a White House speech. U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, the Kentucky Republican and advocate of law enforcement reform, was surrounded and threatened by a mob as he walked back to his hotel. Watching the video was like watching “Lord of the Flies.”
Mindlessly — and what are mobs but roiling of the mindless? — they shouted at him to recognize the victim of another police shooting, Breonna Taylor. “Say her name!” they screamed as they threatened to stomp him.
Taylor was a resident of Louisville, and an EMT, and was killed in March when police executed a so-called no-knock search warrant at her home. It was Sen. Paul who authored the Justice for Breonna Taylor Act to end no-knock warrants and compel law enforcement to announce themselves.
But the mob didn’t care. They recognized Paul as a Republican, as a senator. If police had not protected him, they might have torn him to pieces.
“They were shouting threats to kill us, to hurt us,” Paul said on Fox News, describing the scene. “You couldn’t reason with this mob, but I’m actually the author of the Breonna Taylor law to end no-knock raids. The irony is wasted on these idiots, that they’re trying to kill the person who is trying to get rid of no-knock raids.
“If you defund the police, if America becomes Portland, we can’t have Joe Biden rule the country and have no police. We can’t walk down the street in D.C. safely now. That’s how bad it is,” Paul said.
Yes. That’s how bad it is.
But that’s what happens with fires. You play with matches long enough, eventually things burn.
Listen to “The Chicago Way” podcast with John Kass and Jeff Carlin — at www.wgnradio.com/category/wgn-plus/thechicagoway.
Twitter @John_Kass
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