Last week during their national convention, Democrats had an opportunity to make clear to the nation that they do not tolerate the violence, rioting, and mayhem that has been spreading throughout the nation. Instead they cynically ignored it.
Speech after speech touted Joe Biden and the principles of his party as cities across the country suffered more arson, assaults and property destruction in the name of social justice. To steal a phrase from the left, their silence is violence and the violence is growing.
Democrats and their corporate media allies will argue that Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris have clearly said they don’t support the violence but that they do support what they claim are “mostly peaceful protests” across America. Some go further, insisting that we need to understand the root causes of violence and looting rather than firmly condemning it. The perpetrators got the message, as seen in this clip below.
Looters assault an older business owner trying to defend his business in Kenosha, Wisconsin on August 24, 2020. pic.twitter.com/LdlLnOpvfJ
— After Action Report (@after_theaction) August 25, 2020
At the end of the clip, after a terrified woman witnesses a brutal assault on a business owner who had the temerity to try to put out the fire engulfing his establishment, we hear a woman defend the assault. “We’re trying to protect ourselves,” she says “you don’t understand, we’re terrified, these black men out here, they not making it home to their families.”
Sound familiar? This man was cold cocked by rioters as his store was being looted, but we just have to understand that it’s complicated because of police violence.
The idea that these violent acts are somehow complicated by systemic racism is nonsense, but Democrats turning a blind eye to it, or conflating it somehow with a larger search for social justice absolutely encourages them. Taking a both-sides-have-a-point approach is a tacit approval of violence for the very reason that it is not a firm stance against it.
But it’s even worse than that, because not only are Democratic politicians sending a message to the rioters, who might ignore them even if they were full-throated in the condemnation, they are sending an even clearer message to Democratic officials in the cities ravaged by this criminal behavior. Biden and Harris need to be clear that these Democratic mayors and district attorneys must stop simply handing their cities over to criminals and telling police to stand down.
Biden and Harris are now the leaders of a party that controls Portland, Seattle, Chicago, and Kenosha, the inability of the Democratic officials who they lead to maintain order on the streets is unacceptable and a responsible party leader would make that clear. So why won’t they? Because to do so would give credence to claims by Donald Trump and Republicans that things are out of hand. Biden and Harris will allow lives to be in danger in order to improve, they believe, their electoral chances.
The Democrats are making it obvious that they don’t care about innocent people being assaulted, they don’t care about the businesses being destroyed and they don’t even care about the leftists committing the violence, because if they did they would urge these people to stop for their own good, not just for the broader good of the community, instead they all but pat them on the head.
Early on in this season of rage the Democrats made a bad bet. They wagered that the violence in the wake of George Floyd’s death would soon abate and things would calm down. They wagered that Seattle would have a “summer of love,” not a summer of flames, and that those flames would not spread.
They lost that bet and now to admit they were wrong, which they demonstrably were, would be a gift to the Trump campaign they are not will to give. It’s cynical, it’s partisan, and it is going to get more people killed.
