President Trump hasn't just failed to restrain police violence; he hasn't even tried. It might cost him the election. jonathanchait writes
Photo: Jim Vondruska/NurPhoto via Getty Images If Joe Biden maintains the eerily stable lead he has built in the presidential campaign, Republicans will say it was the coronavirus that ended Donald Trump’s chances of winning a second term. The pandemic certainly hurt. But there is an equally strong — or even stronger — case, that Trump has been done in by a wave of police violence that he not only has failed to restrain, but hasn’t even tried.
Princeton Government professor Omar Wasow has found that in the 1960s, peaceful protests pushed public opinion to the left, while riots and violent demonstrations had the opposite effect. Wasow’s theory for this effect is simple: The public reacts in opposition to whichever side is seen as initiating violence. The sight of cops clubbing nonviolent demonstrators created a backlash against the authorities enforcing segregation; burning and looting stores triggered a reaction.
To be sure, the experiment was conducted last year. But its findings confirm through direct observation the same intuitive conclusion that Wasow observed in the data 50 years before. Americans recoil from one-sided violence against innocent targets. It’s impossible to pin any single case of police abuse on Trump. Cops have been abusing their authority as long as there have been cops. But the president has repeatedly goaded police to step up their levels of violence. He urged a police convention to rough up suspects, and halted the Obama-era reforms designed to curtail excessive force.
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