Are You Sure 'Vote for Joe Biden or We'll Kill You' Is the Best Campaign Pitch?

Supporters of a candidate with confidence in the politician’s ability to win based on making the better argument don’t usually use the heckler’s-veto-on-steroids to coerce people to their point of view. Yet that is precisely what Ronald Brownstein did in an article in The Atlantic.

The underlying tone of the article is: “Vote for Joe Biden or the national temper tantrum will only get worse.” He accuses the president of positioning blue cities as a threat in order to rally voters to his law-and-order agenda. A brief scroll of Twitter will show you that riots in cities like Seattle and Portland are absolutely a threat to safety and security. No one needs President Trump to point it out.

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Of course, the corporate media gaslighting about Peaceful Protestors™ means you shouldn’t believe your own lying eyes. The anarcho-communists in these urban utopias are harassing and rejecting some of the most progressive mayors in the country. This pattern started in Minneapolis when Mayor Jacob Frey was heckled out of a group of protestors with his head bowed after kneeling to their cause.

Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan had protestors descend on her home. So did Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot. And Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, who has been letting antifa operate unchallenged in his city for three years, was chased into the safety of an office building with his security team by the mob. This happened after he was teargassed standing with the rioters.

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I find it hysterical that Brownstein thinks Americans watching the insane looting, arson, and rioting going on in America’s cities cannot identify the threat these groups pose themselves. Residents of Beverley Hills, Calif., Buckhead, Ga., and SoHo in New York have seen this insanity first hand. The anarcho-communists deliberately targeted these wealthier communities. Leaders of Black Lives Matter explained it this way:

“We’ve been very deliberate in saying that the violence and pain and hurt that’s experienced on a daily basis by black folks at the hands of a repressive system should also be visited upon, to a degree, to those who think that they can just retreat to white affluence,” she said.

The idea that President Trump is framing this as some sort of urban/rural divide is just intellectually dishonest. Brownstein is part of an elite corporate media that has been denigrating vast swaths of Americans between the coasts since the 2016 primaries. Deplorable, backward, uneducated, and the full complement of -ists and -isms have been applied with a broad brush. These geniuses just assume there is not an intellectual argument to be made that opposes their worldview.

Brownstein details the friction that exists between Republican governors and Democrat mayors of large urban areas over both escalating violence and COVID-19 management. As a Georgia resident, his positioning of the friction between Governor Kemp and Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms is uninformed and ridiculous.

Georgia did not see an uptick in cases until two weeks after the rioting and looting on Memorial Day weekend. The state had reopened in late April and maintained low new-case rates for the six intervening weeks. Governor Kemp has been clear that no Georgia resident will be fined by a jurisdiction for not wearing a mask but has actively encouraged their use.

And Kemp sent National Guard troops in after violent crime exploded in the city and Atlanta police were hamstrung by the mayor. Surrounding jurisdictions also refused to send officers to support Bottoms in solidarity with the APD officers who were under intense pressure. Georgians outside the Atlanta mayor’s office were glad to see order restored.

Yet Brownstein’s article ends with this quote:

And if Trump wins a second term—especially if that victory relies on another rural surge to overcome massive opposition across the big metros—the chaos in Portland might look like only the preliminary skirmish for an even more incendiary collision to come.

Trump is not trying to divide America. Instead, he is appealing to those who still believe in American ideals rooted in freedom and individual liberty. These are only possible where the system of law and order works. The very idea that any of this violence and lawlessness will subside under a Biden presidency is patently insane.

The insurrectionists have not let up on local leaders who have allowed them to operate with abandon. This acquiescence has emboldened them. It has also allowed them to push the Democrat over the leftward cliff. Even MoveOn calls the Biden agenda the most progressive in history. The organization said that before the Unity Agenda with Sanders was published.

The reason this garbage assessment is being put out there is simple. Between President Trump highlighting Biden’s disastrous housing policy and violent riots bleeding out into wealthier areas, suburban voters are taking note. Add that to the fact that Biden voters seem to be voting against Trump rather than for Basement Joe, and it spells an electoral problem. Suburban voters would need to hate Trump a whole lot to vote to give up local control of their communities.

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If an “incendiary collision” is coming, the only way it results in a country that resembles America is if Donald Trump is reelected. And it would be unconscionable to allow some warped version of the heckler’s veto threatening large-scale violence to be rewarded. That is not a political argument. It’s extortion. And Brownstein should be ashamed of himself for even suggesting it.