The Trump “Law-and-Order” Message is both Backfiring and Failing Badly
| We are now one week and a day out from the conclusion of both political conventions. The poll results have been an unmitigated disaster for the incumbent president, Donald Trump.
Trump’s overall job disapproval number is mired well below 50 percent. On the decisive issue in the campaign, the Coronavirus Pandemic, the voters give him a most emphatic thumbs down. His attempt to politicize the vaccine approval process is gaining him the well-deserved cynicism and contempt of the electorate. The overall result in the Real Clear Politics average of polls is that Trump is down by seven points. The significance of that size of the popular vote margin is best explained by a journalist who began his career in New Jersey, Steve Kornacki of MSNBC. In terms of cable television political savants, Kornacki is the best macro-analyst, while John King of CNN is the best micro-analyst. On Election Night, one can learn from Kornacki the most incisive interpretation of national trends, while King can give you a more detailed explanation than anybody else as to where the votes in any state are coming from. Last week, in interpreting recent polls, Kornacki stated that if a presidential candidate wins the popular vote by more than 5 percent, it is virtually impossible for his or her opponent to win in the Electoral College. So as long as the Joe Biden popular vote margin continues to exceed five percent, Trump is destined to decisive defeat. And most ominous for the Trump campaign, as stated by the noted psephologist Harry Enten, the Biden lead over Trump has been the steadiest on record. https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/06/politics/biden-lead-steady-new-polls/index.html So in desperation, Trump is going to the bottom of his deck and relying on a message of racism, disguised with the words “law and order.” It is an ill-disguised message. Trump is the most virulent racist in the White House since Woodrow Wilson, and he cannot restrain himself from adding to his heritage of bigotry two new overtly racist messages in this campaign: 1) his defamatory attacks against the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement; and 2) his efforts to discontinue racial diversity training at federal agencies. These new Trumpist themes prove that his racism is on the level of his ardent KKK supporter David Duke. The Trump “law and order” message has already had the backfire effect of solidifying Joe Biden’s overwhelming lead among African-American voters. At the beginning of this year, I authored the following column predicting that the African-American vote would propel Biden to both the Democratic presidential nomination and the White House: And this prediction is well on its way to fulfillment. The Biden margin over Trump in the African-American community, as shown by the following poll results taken in the post-convention week, remains stratospheric and impregnable. The USC/Dornsife Poll has Biden with a lead among African-American voters of 87-7. https://uasdata.usc.edu/index.php The Quinnipiac Poll shows Biden ahead of the President among Black voters by 83-11. https://poll.qu.edu/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=3671 And the Morning Consult poll summarizes the Biden advantage among voters of color as follows: At the same time, Trump left the convention with a slightly worse standing among voters of color, trailing Biden by 28 points among Hispanic voters (33 percent to 61 percent) and 74 points among Black voters (9 percent to 83 percent)” https://morningconsult.com/2020/08/29/post-rnc-poll-trump- So with an incorrigibly racist Trump unable to decrease Biden’s massive margin among African-American voters, he feels compelled to convey to white voters the most toxic racist message possible. The problem Trump faces is that the racism present in American society today is much different in terms of its extent and quality from that existing a half century ago in the era of Richard Nixon and George Wallace, the last era in which a racist law-and-order message could be decisive in a presidential race. The racism of the Nixon-Wallace era was both widespread and systemic. The racism of this era is not nearly as widespread, but it is still malignantly systemic. Today’s systemic racism is lodged in 1) municipal police forces where racist police brutality is all too widely practiced; and 2) a Republican Party that maintains pluralities in certain swing states due to suppression of the African-American vote. In a real sense, the Republican Party has become a profit center for systemic racism. The GOP profits from its suppression of the African-American vote and from the support of police unions eager to protect the job security of its members, even those who may have committed acts of racist police brutality. And the decrease in racism among the white population at large has resulted in a major change in the electorate’s attitude towards urban violence. To be sure, neither Whites nor Blacks have any tolerance for violence. Both races want the law to be vigorously enforced against individuals committing acts of looting and physical brutality in the course of urban disturbances. While both Whites and Blacks will respect the right of peaceful protest, they will not tolerate it as a cloak for unlawful thievery and physical assault. The electorate in this era, however, understands a fundamental truth that Donald Trump refuses to recognize. The public knows that only improved racial relations can conclusively restore urban peace and keep our streets safe. And the following NBC composite of polls taken since the conventions entitled “ The results are in: Trump isn’t winning his ‘law-and-order’ fight“ proves conclusively that the American people have far more faith in Joe Biden than Donald Trump in both keeping America safe and improving race relations. The naked “law and order” demagogic message worked for Richard Nixon and George Wallace in the election of 1968. In the absence of a demonstrated desire to heal America’s racial divide, as Biden effectively expressed last week in Pittsburgh and Kenosha and Trump abjectly failed to convey at any time since the Republican Convention, the Trump “law and order” message will continue to fail in 2020. The failed Trump “law-and-order” message, when combined with his catastrophic mishandling of the Coronavirus Pandemic, point to a decisive landslide victory for Biden. We may have to wait a month before the vote count is completed, but at the end of the tabulation, the Biden-Harris triumph will be clear and convincing. Indeed, on Election Day, America will fire Donald Trump, its unfit Commander-in-Chief who regards his soldiers as “suckers and losers” and its criminal chief law enforcement officer who is soliciting his supporters to commit the felony of voting twice in an election. Alan J. Steinberg served as regional administrator of Region 2 EPA during the administration of former President George W. Bush and as executive director of the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission.
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Great column…….clearly and rationally explained.
Keep up the good work, Alan Steinberg, your columns are an inspiration
and appreciated by all who truly care about our beloved country.
The biggest rooter for an English language polluter.
The biggest rooter………..I have never been a rooter.
I wonder if there is a salary involved.
First step act, you should read it. As far as polls go how’s Hillary doing as our president. So if I’m against bricks, bottles, bombs, fireworks being thrown at cops , I guess that makes me a racist. Go find some of the employees that are out of work because of the “peaceful “ protest up in Atlantic City. Go on you tube and type in Antifa and BLM riots. Open your eyes. I will never vote Democrat again.
I sure hope the landslide for Biden comes true.
OOPS: The “Biggest racist since Woodrow Wilson”( A Democrat by the way), just got nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize after having tried to break a 37 year deadlock on the N. Korea/ Korea situation., continued his commitment to withdraw troops from “The Endless Wars”, push for a negotiated settlement between Kashmir/Pakistan, Israel/Palestine, and numerous other initiatives. This instead of what was done “giving” it to Obama before he had even put his shoes on to walk on water, and whose real legacy was Drone Strikes that targeted and killed American Citizens, supplied Al-Qaeda and later ISIS with weapons and support in trying to overthrow the legally elected President of Syria and its people’s choice, and with Biden oversaw the Coup in Ukraine using Nazis, and even that same team running a Coup against the legally elected President here. Maybe you should be rooting for that present White House occupant.
President Donald Trump Nominated for Nobel Peace Prize by Norwegian MP
Sept. 9 (EIRNS)—President Donald Trump was nominated for the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize by a Norwegian Member of Parliament Christian Tybring-Gjedde — who also nominated him in 2018. Most interesting in the statement from Tybring-Gjedde to Fox News: “I’m not a big Trump supporter,” he said. “The committee should look at the facts and judge him on the facts — not on the way he behaves sometimes. The people who have received the Peace Prize in recent years have done much less than Donald Trump. For example, Barack Obama did nothing.”
Tybring-Gjedde also referred to the Israel-U.A.E. agreement in a statement he released, opining that “it is expected other Middle Eastern countries will follow in the footsteps of the U.A.E. — this agreement could be a game changer that will turn the Middle East into a region of cooperation and prosperity…. For his merit, I think he has done more trying to create peace between nations than most other Peace Prize nominees…. Indeed, Trump has broken a 39-year-old streak of American Presidents either starting a war or bringing the United States into an international armed conflict. The last President to avoid doing so was Peace Prize laureate Jimmy Carter.”