OPINION:
The long, hot summer of discontent we can expect as the numerous protests of police violence are accompanied by sackings, and lootings are bound to have an impact on the upcoming presidential race. Whether it will benefit President Donald J. Trump or former Vice President Joe Biden is, at this point, anybody’s guess.
Most prognosticators seem to think it’s all working to Mr. Biden’s benefit. That’s understandable as most of them — if they’re not outright liberals — are still part of a permanent political establishment that views Mr. Trump with contempt. They see the unrest as symptomatic of perpetually seething resentment among blacks and other minority groups who, they believe, will turn out in droves to drive the president from office.
They forget — as do many of us — that it’s still early, that the polls are often wrong and, in the lockdown environment, no one can be assured of anything. Sure, Mr. Trump’s made a few missteps. We still wonder whether the walk across Lafayette Square to the historic St. John’s Church after his Rose Garden remarks was worth the trouble it caused. Yet, as is typical, some of the same Democrats who complained it was nothing more than a photo-op later jumped the shark themselves by kneeling for nine minutes while partially attired in traditional African garb.
The pandering doesn’t match the data. More whites are killed by the police than blacks each year and, even if the numbers are not in proportion to the total U.S. population the number of officer-involved shootings is down across the board.
What’s missing from the discussion is, of course, Mr. Biden. He’s made a few statements and ventured out a few times but he’s not stepping up to be the kind of healer his supporters say he can be. He’s certainly no Bobby Kennedy, who calmed the masses in Indianapolis with an impromptu speech the night Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.
Some people might call that an unfair comparison — and they might be right. Leaders of Kennedy’s stature are few and far between and, in the current crisis, largely absent. But Mr. Biden, who’s been hiding behind his COVID-19 mask in more ways than one, doesn’t seem to even try. Then again, as someone who served in the United States Senate from 1973 to 2009 and as vice president for 8 years, he may have a lot he does not want to talk about.
Remember, Joe Biden was a central figure in writing and securing the passage of the 1994 Crime Bill which, among other things, caused the number of people in jail in the United States to double by 2009. According to a 2019 report by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University law school, the federal dollars allocated to states and communities in that legislation “helped buttress mass incarceration for years.”
Mr. Biden might try to wiggle out from the responsibility for that by passing the buck to other members of the House or Senate who were serving with him. He can try, but he has to get around the assessment by none other than former President Bill Clinton who said “he was the chairman of the committee that had jurisdiction over this crime bill” and bears responsibility for its sentencing provisions.
That’s just one part of a decades-long record of legislating that Joe Biden probably doesn’t want to talk about, especially in the current environment. He helped spearhead efforts in Congress that ultimately led to racial disparities in sentencing for drug convictions that involved crack rather than cocaine in its powdered form and pushed to reinforce mandatory minimum sentencing as part of the War on Drugs.
Mr. Trump’s record on these matters is almost the exact opposite. Rather than push to put people behind bars, he’s led efforts to reform the criminal system that is helping balance the books. People of color incarcerated for long periods after being caught possessing even small amounts of illegal drugs for personal use have been set free thanks to the First Step Act the president long championed.
The nation’s views on race and crime are changing. Not to be overly broad, it may be fair to say President Trump has helped people jailed under laws passed with the help of Joe Biden get a fresh start and a second chance. We look forward to seeing the two of them hash it out on that point, which they can do once the former vice president comes out of the bunker to which he withdrew because of COVID-19. In the meantime, if he and his supporters think he can pull a divided country together, let him go to places like Minneapolis, Louisville and Atlanta and show us what he can do to bring an end to the violence, the arson and the riots.
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