The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from his blog:

Understandably, people focus on the margins in the trial heats and lately they’ve been very good for Joe Biden, averaging over an 8 point lead in recent polls. But that actually undersells how well Biden has been doing. Because the absolute level at which he’s been polling support is a very, very good sign. Put simply, he’s hitting 50 percent or higher consistently and that gives him a dominant position in the race.

If you have wished for more ads and stories about pro athletes and popular entertainers raising hell about voter suppression, check out Alex Reimer’s “LeBron James’ Voting Rights Push Could Be A Historically Significant Athlete-Led Political Campaign” at Forbes. Reimer notes, “James is forming a voting rights organization along with several other prominent Black athletes and entertainers. The group, called More Than a Vote, will go beyond traditional get-out-the-vote campaigns. It will combat voter suppression, with James using his gigantic presence on social media to shed light on attempts to restrict voting access for minorities…“Because of everything that’s going on, people are finally starting to listen to us — we feel like we’re finally getting a foot in the door,” James told the New York Times in an interview. “How long is up to us. We don’t know. But we feel like we’re getting some ears and some attention, and this is the time for us to finally make a difference…James’ efforts against voter suppression promise to be widely broadcast. But the truth is, James has enough reach on his own to make a tangible difference in public awareness. The three-time champion and four-time MVP boasts more than 136 million followers across his Twitter, Instagram and Facebook feeds. To put that in perspective, 137 million people voted in the 2016 presidential election, the NYT points out.”

A good video to share with South Carolina voters who may want to elect a new senator with consistent principles — Sen. Lindsey Graham blasts Trump and lavishly praises Biden in 2016. from a new ad by Republican Voters Against Trump:

New York Times columnist Thomas B. Edsall notes that, “in an unpublished working paper, “Sorting Apart: Partisan Polarization in the American Electorate, 1972-2016,” Stanley Feldman writes, “It’s clear that preferences have shifted significantly in a more conservative direction over this time period among Republican identifiers,” Feldman wrote, adding that contrary to those who argue that racial hostility among working class whites is the deciding factor in elections, he and his co-authors found that “It’s not the case that conservative racial issue preferences are concentrated among low-income whites. High-income Republicans are more conservative on racial issues than low-income Republicans.””

Edsall notes further, “Joe Biden’s lead over Trump has grown from 5.6 points to 8.1 points since Floyd was killed on May 25; Trump’s disapproval rating has risen and his approval level has fallen over the same period; and the Democratic advantage in the generic congressional vote has inched upward…While a leftward movement among voters, particularly on racial matters, is, at the moment, indisputable, these and other social and cultural issues remain volatile, and Republicans remain undeterred…Joe Trippi, a Democratic consultant, is thinking landslide too, but not Stephens’s landslide: ‘The more wound up we get on coronavirus and unemployment and race, the more chaos we see. If Trump is chaos and Biden is community, what will the country choose? I think a whole bunch of suburban G.O.P. women, younger G.O.P., business G.O.P. and college educated G.O.P. choose Biden and community. G.O.P. women are exhausted by the chaos.'”

In their article, “There’s A Huge Gap In How Republicans And Democrats See Discrimination” at FiveThirtyEight, Meredeith Conroy and Perry Bacon, Jr report on “findings about perceptions of discrimination and perceptions of various groups in American society, based on recent polling from the Democracy Fund + UCLA Nationscape project.” Conroy and Bacon report that “An overwhelming majority of Democrats thought black and Muslim Americans face “a great deal” or “a lot” of discrimination in America today, as opposed to “a moderate amount,” “little” or “none at all.” Perceptions of discrimination against black people have surged among all groups, including Republicans, in the wake of Floyd’s death. But the vast majority of Democrats thought that black people in America faced high levels of discrimination even before Floyd’s death.² About half of Democrats also thought women face a lot of discrimination…In contrast, only about half of Republicans thought that black people and Muslims face high levels of discrimination, and only about a quarter thought that women do. The majority of Republicans thought those groups face “a moderate amount,” “little” or “no” discrimination at all.”

Conroy and Bacon note further that “Nearly half of Democrats expressed unfavorable views about police and evangelicals. Unfavorable views of the police have substantially increasedfrom polling before Floyd’s death,⁵ but Democrats’ unfavorable views of evangelicals were already very high and remain so. About a quarter of Democrats said they had unfavorable views of white Americans; a quarter said the same of undocumented immigrants,⁶ even though the Democratic Party is increasingly supportive of immigration and immigrants…In contrast, large shares of Republicans expressed unfavorable views of undocumented immigrants, LGBT Americans and Muslims. More than 20 percent of Republicans said that they had unfavorable views of black Americans and police, with the latter group having increased in unfavorability substantially since Floyd’s death.⁷”

“There were also some notable differences among Democrats,” Bacon and Conroy note. “For example, Democrats under 45 were significantly more likely than those over 45 to say they had an unfavorable view of the police (54 percent compared to 38 percent). Black Democrats were more likely than white Democrats to have unfavorable views of the police (58 percent to 41 percent). Black and Hispanic Democrats were about twice as likely as white Democrats to view LGBT Americans unfavorably, and about 30 percent of both groups expressed unfavorable views of white Americans. And white Democrats, in particular, viewed evangelicals unfavorably (50 percent)…

Conroy and Bacon conclude, “When social identities are threatened (real or imagined threats, often made salient by group leaders), individuals retreat to the safety of their in-groups, and react defensively with more negative feelings toward outside groups. And given the effectiveness of in-group retreating for political outcomes, there is little chance of this changing anytime soon, at least from political leaders who stand to gain the most from these identity-based fights…The activation of social identities can have positive democratic outcomes, too. For instance, Trump’s anti-Latino rhetoric led to increased political activity from Latinos with a stronger racial identity. And as we wrote about last week, strong racial identity among black Americans leads to collective voting to defend group interests. Moreover, if a sense of shared identity can be triggered, partisans can come together to prioritize national interests…But so long as the parties remain largely distinct in terms of the group identities of their members — and how those members feel about other groups — ingroup and outgroup conflict is easily activated.”

Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr. has this encouraging observation about Biden and his campaign for Democrats: “He has offered policy-laden critiques of Trump’s handling of covid-19, the economy and the policing issue. Later this month, those familiar with his thinking say, he’ll offer a plan for big investments in job creation. They will focus on strengthening the nation’s domestic industrial base, clean energy and caregiving to children, the elderly and the disabled…In other words, Biden is not acting as if he thinks the election is already won, and he’s not averse to big proposals. As one Biden insider notes, the former vice president’s agenda — on health care, education, climate change and policing, for example — is “much more progressive” than the programs offered by Obama in 2008 and Hillary Clinton in 2016…This doesn’t mean he’s moved “too far left.” On the contrary, the ideas he has plucked from the progressive portfolio are vote-winners, not vote-losers. Lowering the Medicare eligibility age to 60 is very popular with voters between the ages of 60 and 65. Free public college for students from families with incomes under $125,000 a year is popular, too.”

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from his blog:

Does Biden Need the “Enthusiastic Support of Black Voters”?

That’s the claim of a letter sent to the Biden campaign by 50 or so liberal organizations, who allege he will not get that enthusiastic support unless he embraces a lengthy series of demands included in their letter. These demands include reparations, defunding the police and withdrawing support for investments in community policing.

There are two things wrong with the letter’s argument. First, Biden already has sufficient black support to win the election, even though he is currently running a little behind Clinton’s 2016 pace. Moreover, recent data suggest that support is firming up (see below). The fact of the matter is that Biden is solidly ahead at the moment because he has reasonable nonwhite support and is running way ahead of Clinton among both white college and noncollege voters. He would benefit from increased black support relative to the current baseline–the more votes and the bigger margin he has, the better–but he does not “need” that to win the election.

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from his blog:

It’s important to understand what public opinion is and is not saying about the protests, BLM and the police.

First, as widely understood, net favorability toward Black Lives Matter has spiked upward in the last few weeks. The public generally sees the associated protests as justified, overwhemingly condemns the killing of George Floyd and police brutality generally and is increasingly likely to see a racial bias problem in policing.

Not surprisingly, support for reforming the police and police practices is now very strong indeed, as poll after poll has shown (see graphic below for one example).

But that does not mean the public is suddenly on an anti-police vendetta and wants to defund or abolish (!) police forces. That is a view among some BLM and associated activists but it is wildly unpopular with the public (see below for a representative polling result). Even “cutting funding” for the police isn’t popular and the most anodyne formulation possible–reducing the police budget in your community to shift funding to mental health, housing and education–only garners 39 percent support vs. 60 percent opposition (Ipsos). This result no doubt reflects the fact that most people are very or somewhat satisfied with the job the policy are doing in their local community (71 percent, Monmouth).

Finally, the embrace of the Black Lives Matter by the public does not mean the embrace of what you might call the ideology of the movement, which sees the US as a white supremacist society where radical steps like defunding the police are a necessity. It reflects, rather, horror at the specific George Floyd incident and a general opposition to racism and policy brutality that is rooted in the deeply-held value that all should be treated fairly. This is shown by a recent Yougov/Economist result where people were asked about whether they had positive or negative reactions to different slogans, including Black Lives Matter and All Lives Matter. The associations with Black Lives Matter were 52 percent positive/22 percent negative. The associations with All Lives Matter were….56 percent positive/23 percent negative.

So it’s a different world out there than you find on Twitter or among activists or within elite media circles. But that world is the real one and the one where change has to take place.

I’ll give the last word to the very wise James Clyburn:

“When you allow people to use incendiary terms, we create a climate within which we can’t get much done,…‘Defund the police’ is unnecessarily confusing, I think all of us know that sound bites tend to get interpreted in all kinds of ways and if you’ve got to explain the sound bite, you’re losing the whole issue.

For me, the word defund means what Merriam-Webster says that it means. So if you’re talking about reallocating resources, say that. If you mean reimagining policing, say that. If you’re going to reform policing, say that. Don’t tell me you’re going to use a term that you know is charged — and tell me that it doesn’t mean what it says.

Nobody wants George Floyd to be remembered by a burning building — we want to remember him by reforming policing,”

Amen.

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from his blog:

Trump’s had a lot of bad polling news lately. But arguably the worst news of all for him is that he’s losing ground among white noncollege voters. This is despite clearly targeting his campaign toward getting more of these voters than he did in 2016 to make up for his overwhelming disadvantage among nonwhite voters and a widening gap with white college voters. But he’s not getting more of these voters, he’s getting less. This is catastrophic for his campaign if it continues.

This is a general pattern but it definitely applies to the three key Rustbelt states he has to win; Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. According to the Democracy Fund + UCLA Nationscape survey (6000 cases a week, over 110,000 since the beginning of the year, 45,000 just since April 1), Trump’s lead against Biden among white noncollege voters in Michigan and Wisconsin is only in single digits and in Pennsylvania it is less than half of what it was in 2016.

I’m not the only one to notice this. Nate Cohn in his latest New York Times analysis notes that:

“The decline in the president’s standing has been particularly pronounced among white voters without a college degree, helping to explain why the Trump campaign has felt compelled to air advertisements in Ohio and Iowa, two mostly white working-class battleground states where Mr. Trump won by nearly 10 points four years ago.

In the most recent polls, white voters without a college degree back the president by 21 points, down from 31 points in March and April and down from the 29-point lead Mr. Trump held in the final polls of registered voters in 2016.

Mr. Trump didn’t just lose support to the undecided column; Mr. Biden ticked up to an average of 37 percent among white voters without a degree. The figure would be enough to assure Mr. Biden the presidency, given his considerable strength among white college graduates. In the most recent polls, white college graduates back Mr. Biden by a 20-point margin, up four points since the spring. It’s also an eight-point improvement for the Democratic nominee since 2016, and a 26-point improvement since 2012.”

Evan Scrimshaw at Decision Desk HQ sums up the situation for Trump succinctly:

“What Biden is doing is a very tricky double, essentially. He is marrying the anti-chaos reactions of many white voters, especially those with degrees, to an immense degree while holding Obama-esque shares of working class, non-degree whites. He is winning the voters who gave the Democrats the House by upwards of 25% per CNN while holding his losses with White Non-College voters to the high teens in both NBC/WSJ and CNN. That coalition – holding the overall white margin to a near tie while winning non-white voters – is the most efficient possible coalition in the US, and either means that the South is in play (if Southern Non-College whites are moving at all to Biden) or the Rust Belt is just moving to Biden at a rapid pace (if Southern Non-college whites are staying ruby red). Either way, Trump needs to fix this or he’s done.”

Yup. It ain’t over ’til it’s over but right now Trump is in a world of trouble. You live by the sword, you die by the sword…..

A sampling of headlines in reports about Georgia’s primary election: “Georgia election ‘catastrophe’ in largely minority areas sparks investigation: Long lines, lack of voting machines and shortages of primary ballots plagued voters. (from nbcnews.com); “Primary results: Highlights from a messy election night in Georgia and 4 other states” (from CNN Politics); Voters See Chaos At Georgia Primary Elections (npr.org).

Not a good look for the Georgia GOP. As you might expect the state’s Secretary of State’s office blames the problems on an unusually-large turnout, new voting machines and, somehow, Democrats, even though Republicans control the voting process. As Kevin Collier, Cyrus Farivar, Dareh Gregorian and Ben Popken report at NBC News:

Hourslong waits, problems with new voting machines and a lack of available ballots plagued voters in majority minority counties in Georgia on Tuesday — conditions the secretary of state called “unacceptable” and vowed to investigate.

Democrats and election watchers said voting issues in a state that has been plagued for years by similar problems, along with allegations of racial bias, didn’t bode well for the November presidential election, when Georgia could be in play.

“This seems to be happening throughout Atlanta and perhaps throughout the county. People have been in line since before 7:00 am this morning,” Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, a Democrat, tweeted shortly after polls were supposed to open — and in some cases still hadn’t.

Do not hold your breath, waiting for photos of long lines and confusion at predominantly-Republican polls in GA. Kristen Clarke, president and CEO of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a civil rights group, said “Three-quarters of voters who called with problems identified as African American.”

You may remember that Georgia was also an election problem child in 2018. As Collier, Farivar, Gregorian and Popken explain,

Voting problems also plagued Fulton County in 2018, which led to allegations of voter suppression by Democrats. The secretary of state at the time was Brian Kemp, a Republican, who wound up winning the governorship by a thin margin against Democrat Stacey Abrams. Abrams at the time called the election “rotten and rigged.”

Georgia has added 700,000 voters to the registration rolls since 2018. Massive incompetence may be the kindest description of Georgia’s curent government. As Andrea Young, executive director of the ACLU of Georgia, put it: “Whether it is incompetence or intentional voter suppression — the result is the same — Georgians denied their rights as citizens in this democracy.”

Since Georgia is not only a swing state in the presidential election, but also has two senate seats in play, Democrats can not be blamed for thinking the worst, and their party is challenged to respond with a robust legal, media and GOTV strategy.

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from his blog:

Trump’s definitely having his problems these days but it is still surprising the Ohio is actually looking like it might be in play. The recent Fox poll (a highly-rated poll, by the way) had Biden up by a couple of points. And Markos at Daily Kos provides a table based on Civiqs data that shows Ohio’s ranking among various swing states in terms of net Trump approval. Interesting!

That got me curious so I went back and looked at the internals of the Fox poll–if Trump is in trouble in Ohio, what’s driving that? In contrast to some other states, the problem here for Trump appears to be white noncollege voters, not white college voters. Comparing States of Change data to the Fox poll, Trump is doing about as well (tied) as he did in 2016 among white college voters, but among white noncollege his lead has is down from 32 to 17 points. Even more interesting, that is exactly how Obama won Ohio (by 3 points) in 2012–he tied with white college voters and while losing white noncollege by about 17 points!

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from his blog:

The protests around the country sparked by the police killing of George Floyd continue to gather support. As measured by Morning Consult polling, support for the protests is now at 62 percent, up from 54 percent a week ago. Other polling shows strong majorities saying the protests are legitimate, justified expressions of dissent not people acting unlawfully or rioting.

No doubt these solid numbers reflect both the popularity of the cause itself and the recent decline in incidents of looting and arson, which threatened to divert attention from the peaceful protests. They also reflect the general view that Trump has done a poor job or handling these protests and resulting social tensions.

As a result, Trump’s overall popularity continues to decline and his standing in trial heat polls vs. Biden has also been slipping. Assuming that protests remain peaceful, Trump may have a hard time regaining more favorable political terrain.

The protests have also raised the profile of police reform as an issue and here there is great potential for progress.. As Conor Friedersdorf summarizes in an Atlantic article, a late May YouGov/Yahoo poll found the following:

“Eighty-nine percent of respondents believe that Floyd’s killer should be charged with at least third-degree murder. “Going forward, Americans largely favor a set of reforms to reduce deadly-force encounters with police,” the poll found. “Sixty-seven percent support banning neck restraints; 80 percent support an early-warning system to identify problematic officers; 87 percent support outfitting all cops with body cameras; and 88 percent training officers to de-escalate conflicts and avoid using force.”

That’s extraordinary––super majorities in favor of broad reforms specifically targeted to reduce unjust killings.”

Good stuff; these kind of reform measures and more are already finding their way into Biden’s platform deliberations and Democratic legislative proposals. Progress seems likely though how much will greatly depend in what happens this November.

It may also depend on the current movement not becoming diverted by quixotic demands that repel potential supporters and muddy the political waters. The most obvious example here is the newly popular (among activists) slogan of “defund the police”. This slogan has been advanced by a number of BLM leaders and just today was spray-painted in huge yellow letters on a downtown Washington street.

Defund the police is terrible idea: it’s toxic as politics and insane as policy. As politics: the overwhelming majority of voters have no interest whatsoever in defunding the police. Political scientist Emily Ekins notes the following:

“[F]ew people support calls to abolish or defund the police: 9 in 10 black, white and Hispanic Americans oppose reducing the number of police officers in their community—and a third say their community needs more officers the Cato survey [on police reform] found. And a Yahoo/​Yougov survey found that only 16% of Americans favor cutting funding for police departments, including 12% of whites, 33% of blacks, and 17% of Hispanics.”

In short, people don’t want to get ride of cops, they want better cops. And, as policy, what makes sense is not to get rid of cops but to have more of them. The case for this is very strong, Matt Yglesias wrote a lengthy article summarizing the relevant research over a year ago which repays careful attention at the present time.

“The swing toward greater attention to racial disparities in the criminal justice system and desire to find more humane methods of crime control is long overdue. But there’s a very real risk that in the wake of the leftward swing in the Black Lives Matter era, Democrats are leaving behind genuinely effective and politically appealing approaches to criminal justice that the party has championed in the recent past.

Solid data suggests that even if you take a realistic view of the police, spending money to hire more police officers — an idea espoused by both Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama — is a sound approach to the multifaceted problem of criminal justice. More police officers, in particular, doesn’t need to mean more arrests and more incarceration. More beat cops walking the streets seems to deter crime and reduce the need to arrest anyone. And some of the best-validated approaches to reducing excessive use of force by police officers require departments to adopt more manpower-intensive practices.

In terms of the intersection of criminal justice policy and racial politics, new polling provided exclusively to Vox from the leading Democratic data firm Civis Analytics shows that black voters — just like white ones — support the idea of hiring more police officers. Black voters are likely aware that they are disproportionately likely to be victims of crime and disproportionately likely to benefit from extra police staffing in high-crime areas. Indeed, as Jenée Desmond-Harris wrote for Vox in 2015, one primary grievance African Americans have with the criminal justice systems is that black neighborhoods are paradoxically underpoliced.

Especially with America’s police departments facing staffing challenges as they’re squeezed between tight budgets and a recovering labor market, the political and policy case for more federal help hiring cops is impeccable….

[D]ifferent communities will and do feel differently about the police. But to rely on data rather than anecdotes, Civis Analytics ran a mid-January poll on a range of policing subjects and shared the results with Vox — finding that extra policing is broadly popular across racial groups and that most African Americans and Latinos express favorable views of their local police.

The firm framed the issue this way: “Some members of your state legislature are proposing increasing the budget for the police force and hiring more police officers in high crime areas. If you have to choose, do you support or oppose increasing the number of police officers?”

The results were unequivocally favorable to the proposal, with 60 percent of African Americans, 65 percent of Latinos, and 74 percent of whites saying they support it.

No one issue is going to be decisive in a presidential campaign, and certainly not something as small-bore as federal police funding. But the fact that this idea was embraced by the past two victorious Democratic presidential candidates, is broadly popular, is especially popular with key swing voters, and is also well-grounded in policy amounts to a powerful case that it deserves to make a comeback.

That’s especially true precisely because it’s a slightly odd thematic fit for a Black Lives Matter-conscious Democratic Party. It’s both politically and substantively important for a political movement that wants to advance reforms of the criminal justice system to emphasize that reform does not mean indifference to crime.

Providing money to put more cops on the beat is a proven and cost-effective means of bringing crime down that offers a humane alternative to harsh prison sentences as a deterrent and at least offers some prospect of cutting down on disproportionate use of force as well. The total amount of money involved is, moreover, pretty small. Even at the peak of Obama’s local police funding program, he allocated “only” $1 billion. But the symbolism is large, a clear statement that Democrats take the problem of crime seriously and see the value of police officers’ work…..

It’s one idea from the “tough on crime” 1990s that actually worked out well and deserves to make a comeback in 2020.”

I agree. And need I point out that Donald Trump would love to make this election about defunding the police? One hopes that the somewhat inchoate movement that has arisen to protest George Floyd’s death avoids this trap.

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from his blog:

It is fair to say that Joe Biden has not captured the imagination of young voters. He lost badly to Sanders among these voters in the primaries and, now that he is the presumptive nominee, still does not seem to arouse much enthusiasm.

But lack of enthusiasm does not mean they won’t vote for him. 538 analysis of 90 national polls in the last few months shows Biden with a 24 point lead among 18-29 year old voters. That’s close to what I’m seeing in the Democracy Fund + UCLA Nationscape survey (6,000 respondents a week). The 538 article notes that that margin is actually a little higher than what Clinton received among that group in the 2016 election, according to the Cooperative Congressional Election Survey (CCES) data. The current margin is actually a little smaller than Clinton’s when compared to the States of Change data. But in neither case is the difference between Biden’s current performance among young voters and Clinton’s support in 2016 more than a few points.

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from his blog:

As protests around the George Floyd killing continue around the country, punctuated in some cities by considerable looting, property damage and arson, the question arises whether the left should be concerned about a backlash to this violence that could benefit the right.

One response is to point out that the overwhelming majority of demonstrators are peaceful and that the proper response is therefore to ignore the violence and simply talk about the issues that sparked the protests. This seems like wishful thinking. Voters all over the country are by now very, very aware of what is going on beyond peaceful protests and many are likely to be quite disturbed by it. Their concerns will not be assuaged by assertions that the protests are, by and large, peaceful. It’s the part that isn’t that worries them.

Another response is to say that the current situation is quite different from, say, 1968 where backlash was effectively used by Richard Nixon to gain the Presidency. These differences include:

1. Trump isn’t nearly as smart as Nixon and doesn’t seem interested in reaching beyond his die-hard base to moderate voters who might be sensitive to the street violence. Tear-gassing demonstrators in Lafayette Park so he could walk across the park to, bizarrely, hold a bible and have a photo-op in front of St John’s church is a good example of his non-optimizing tactics.

2. Trump is the incumbent and therefore is presiding over the current chaos. This makes it more difficult for him to portray and a “change” candidate who can make things right.

3. The likelihood of a strong third party candidate this year is small, so Trump will not be able to position himself as the candidate in the middle as Nixon did in 1969.

These are all reasonable points. But they do not persuade me that the danger of backlash does not exist at all and therefore need not be considered. Chaos and violence in the streets is generally not good for the left and the cause of racial equality. It’s certainly possible that this won’t matter much this year, given Trump’s bone-headed actions and unpopularity. But it might and that should have us all nervous and taking evasive action. Princeton political scientist Omar Wasow explains in an interview on the New Yorker website:

“I would say that nonviolent protests can be very effective if they are able to get media attention, and that there is a very strong relationship between media coverage and public concern about whatever issues those protesters are raising. But there is a conditional effect of violence, and what that means, in practice, is that groups that are the object of state violence are able to get particularly sympathetic press—and a large amount of media coverage. But that is a very hard strategy to maintain, and what we often see is that, when protesters engage in violence, often in a very understandable response to state repression, that tends to work against their cause and interests, and mobilizes or becomes fodder for the opposition to grow its coalition.

What we observe in the nineteen-sixties is that there was a nontrivial number of white moderates who were open to policies that advanced racial equality, and were also very concerned about order. The needle that civil-rights activists were trying to thread was: How do you advance racial equality, and capture the attention of often indifferent or hostile white moderates outside of the South, and at the same time grow a coalition of allies?….

When we observed a wave of violent protests in the mid- to late sixties, those white moderates who supported the Democratic Party after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 defected to the Republican Party in 1968. So, when the state was employing violence and protesters were the targets of that violence, the strategy worked well, and when protesters engaged in violence—whether or not the state was—those voters moved to the law-and-order coalition….

When we observed a wave of violent protests in the mid- to late sixties, those white moderates who supported the Democratic Party after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 defected to the Republican Party in 1968. So, when the state was employing violence and protesters were the targets of that violence, the strategy worked well, and when protesters engaged in violence—whether or not the state was—those voters moved to the law-and-order coalition….

I think there is a lot of evidence that nonviolent tactics can be effective. You saw this on the first day in Minneapolis, where the police showed up with an excess of force, and you had these images of children running away and police dressed like stormtroopers. There are a set of narrative scripts in the public mind, and I think we interpret the news through those preëxisting narratives. And so a nonviolent protest where we see state excesses is a very powerful and sympathetic narrative for the cause of fighting police violence. And as soon as the tactics shift to more aggressive violent resistance—and, to be clear, as best I can tell, police were shooting rubber bullets and there was tear gas. It seemed like an excessive police response, and so in reaction protesters escalated as well. That has an unfortunate side effect of muddying the story. Instead of talking about the history of police killings in Minneapolis, we are talking about a store going up in flames, and the focus in reporting tends to shift from a justice frame to a crime frame. And that is an unfortunate thing for a protest movement. It ends up undermining the interests of the advocates….

What’s often hard for people to see is that there are these white moderates who are part of the Democratic coalition as long as they perceive there to be order, but when they perceive there to be too much disorder they shift to the party that has owned the issue of order, which is the Republican Party. For some people, the idea that there are these swing Democratic-minded voters is hard to grasp, but there is pretty strong evidence that in 2016, and in 1968, that was an important and influential niche of voters.”

A reasonable question is who these movable white moderates might be in the current context. One nomination would be whites over 65. As has been widely noted, Biden has greatly benefited from the movement of seniors, around 24 percent of 2016 voters, away from Trump and into the Democratic camp. Based on States of Change and Nationscape data, this movement has been a massive shift from 2016 of 21 margin points. The great majority of this group is white, comprising 20 percent of all voters, and they have had a similarly sized shift toward the Democrats since 2016.

As a point of comparison, consider young (under 30) black voters where Biden has been underperforming relative to Clinton–by about 15 margin points according to the same data. But this group is only around 2 percent of voters.

What this means concretely is that the shift toward Biden among white seniors has added 4 margin points to his current lead. But underperformance among young black voters has only subtracted 3/10 of a percentage point from that lead. This political arithmetic needs to be considered carefully when assessing the possible effects of backlash and the historical lessons highlighted by Wasow.