Biden to Air Nationwide Law-and-Order Ad Condemning Rioters and Looters (NYT)
This is so monumentally, stunningly, agonizingly stupid. Biden is adopting Trump’s false narrative about the protests, adopting Trump’s language and fighting on Trump’s turf, the very issue Trump WANTS to be the focus of the campaign, instead of his own manifold crimes and failures. I can’t even process how self-defeating this is. Thousands of Americans are dying needless deaths every week due to Trump’s mishandling (and deliberate exacerbation) of the pandemic. Tens of millions are out of work, facing homelessness, ruin and desperation. The Postal Service upon which so many Americans depend is literally being destroyed before our eyes. The rule of law is literally being destroyed before our eyes by a renegade Justice Department run by a nasty thug spreading authoritarian rule for his boss. At every turn, the physical infrastructure and social fabric of the United States is being ripped to shreds, while trillions of dollars are being ripped from the pockets of ordinary citizens and given to corruption-riddled elites. Trump has even publicly promised to destroy the Social Security programme if he is re-elected, threatening every American retiree – now and in the future – with poverty, misery and early death.
THIS is what’s actually happening in the country, as a direct result of Trump’s policies. No candidate in the history of American politics has ever been given the kind of ammunition Biden has to steamroll his campaign to a huge victory. And what he is doing, at this absolutely crucial time, as the campaign heads into its final few weeks? He’s spending $45 million – the biggest outlay of the entire campaign – to adopt Trump’s bogus mantra of “law and order” and show he’s even tougher than Trump is. He too wants to see every kid who spray-paints “BLM” on a wall prosecuted and sent to prison. He too will use cops, troops, tear gas, armored cars, kidnap vans, rubber bullets and flash grenades on mothers linking arms to protest murder and injustice. And he too will paint an absolutely minuscule number of sporadic incidents of “property damage,” in very tiny, concentrated areas of a few cities, as some kind of epidemic of “rioting and looting” – while, exactly like Trump, ignoring that almost every “violent clash” has begun with police forces attacking peaceful protestors.
A week-long, $45 million ad campaign that doesn’t even mention the pandemic, doesn’t address the actual suffering of actual people from the policies of his opponent: just tough-guy posturing and a few empty bromides about “unity.” A whole week blanketing the country with this malarkey, helping Trump keep the focus exactly where he wants it – on the fake news of “cities on fire” – while ignoring the realities of a broken, bleeding nation and its people. It drives one to utter despair. Are they really, actually just going to hand the election to Trump on a platter?