Before the murder of George Floyd, an African-American man, at the hands—I’m sorry, at the knee—of Derek Chauvin, a white Minneapolis police officer, the plan was for Joe Biden to ride a wave of coronavirus resentment all the way to the White House this November.
That was before Minneapolis went up in flames. And before conflagrations in other parts of the country threatened to follow suit.
Have the electoral dynamics now shifted?
Earlier today, Vox’s Matthew Yglesias floated the idea that Donald Trump could harness the terrifying fury of the riots into a successful reelection bid. The idea makes sense: voters tend to find it unbecoming when major American cities get apocalyptically ransacked. And since the protesters have made every effort to signal that they, um, don’t think much of the president, it’s not going to be a hard sell for Trump and his reelection machine to present them as enemies of the MAGA project.
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