Promoting a Progressive Strategy in the Presidential Campaign
With his incompetent response to the virus and its disastrous economic consequences finally undermining important segments of his previously impregnable political base, Trump is becoming increasingly desperate facing what seems to be a looming electoral disaster. Further, he has shown absolutely no appreciation for, or sympathy with, the growing protests against racial oppression that has so powerfully emerged in the aftermath of the video showing the police murder of George Floyd.
Rather, his response has increasingly been to focus his election strategy on seeking to mobilize fear of growing social lawlessness purportedly driven by radical leftists. His particular target has become suburban whites, who are to be made fearful of increasingly violent protests, purportedly led by inner city black and brown people.
These protests are themselves the long overdue efforts, initiated by the Black Lives Matter movement, to mobilize America to finally come to terms with its history of racial oppression. They have been particularly remarkable by their cultural and geographical reach, their multi—racial constitution, and their remarkably non-violent character.
Trump has, of course, no sympathy for efforts to address racial injustice, to counter its institutional forms, and to address its human consequences. Rather he sees these protests as offering him an opportunity to re-focus his floundering campaign, by stoking any and all forms of latent white racial resentments. To do this he needs to create a violent reality that can be used as public propaganda in support of the fear mongering political narrative that is to drive his campaign.
To do this he is sending official militarized personnel into Democratically-run urban centers, under the claim of protecting federal property and preserving law and order. These Trumpian troopers then provoke the protesters (perhaps even seeding these protests with a handful of right-wing provocateurs). The aim is to create the violent conditions that play into his political narrative, in order to retrospectively justify the claim that Democratically-led urban centers are out of control, having been taken over by dangerous and violent radical mobs.
This being Trump’s key electoral strategy, it is vital that protestors themselves, mostly youth-led and multi-racial, not play into this Trumpian Trap. This is a truly remarkable moment in American history, with great possibilities for beginning to seriously address a profound historical injustice. For the first time there are real signs of a truly national awakening to the nature, extent, and ongoing consequences of America’s racial history. And there is remarkable wide-spread popular support for this national movement.
Such popular support further undermines Trump’s policies, programs, and narrow political base. It thus constitutes a significant additional impediment to his re-election. If he is to regain the political momentum, he needs to undermine this popular support, while mobilizing white resentment, and turning public attention away from the disasters of his economy and his response to the virus. For it is clearly far too late for him to constructively address the virus before the election. And without a real solution to the virus, there is little hope for any real economic improvement. Hence, mobilizing racism may well be his only electoral hope.
It is thus vital that the “movement for Black lives,” and the on-going and necessary nation-wide protests not fall into the Trumpian Trap by engaging in, approving of, or failing to inhibit violent confrontations with Trump’s occupying forces. It should be clear by now that Trump is only sending these troops into Democratically-run urban centers in order precisely to instigate the violent unrest that his campaign so desperately needs to seem to be quelling in order to regain the political momentum. Protesters must not lend any credence to this Trumpian narrative. Rather, strict adherence to, and active and public promotion of, non-violent confrontation must be the order of the day.