Riot On!

Democrats still don’t get it.

As the riots in Los Angeles developed, one question kept going through my brain: Have Democrats learned anything?

The chaos in Southern California could have been designed in a lab to exploit Democratic weak spots, combining the issues of illegal immigration, crime, and public disorder. Yet their most visible response to the anti-deportation riots in Los Angeles has been to denounce President Trump for sending National Guard troops to quell the riots. The situation, they insist, is under control—or at least it was, until Trump intervened.

This view is not shared by some in charge of actually doing the quelling. As Los Angeles police chief Jim McDonnell admitted at a Sunday evening press conference:

We are overwhelmed…Tonight, we had individuals out there shooting commercial-grade fireworks at our officers…that can kill you…They’ll take backpacks filled with cinder blocks and hammers, break the blocks, and pass the pieces around to throw at officers and cars, and even at other people.

Meanwhile, California governor Gavin Newsom waved the bloody shirt of January 6, arguing that that was when the National Guard was needed and that therefore Trump is a hypocrite to call them in now. The state is now suing to stop the deployment while Newsom exchanges insults with Trump and White House “border czar” Tom Homan.

New Jersey senator Cory Booker echoed Newsom on Sunday, calling the protests “peaceful” while blaming Trump for “sowing chaos.” And Democratic commentators like former Labor Secretary Robert Reich saw the use of the National Guard as ushering in “the first stages of a Trump police state.” Congressional Black Caucus chair Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-NY) declared that Trump’s actions were “unlawful” and that they constituted “impeachable offenses.”

In lonely contrast to these voices, John Fetterman, the maverick Democrat Senator from Pennsylvania channeled the normie voter reaction to violent street demonstrations:

My party loses the moral high ground when we refuse to condemn setting cars on fire, destroying buildings, and assaulting law enforcement…I unapologetically stand for free speech, peaceful demonstrations, and immigration—but this is not that...This is anarchy and true chaos.

The fact that he is virtually the only prominent Democrat to say something like this speaks volumes.

There might very well be a universe where it makes sense for Democrats—already saddled with a dreadful image on crime and immigration—to train their fire on Trump and the National Guard instead of anti-deportation rioters. However, it is not the universe we currently inhabit.

As David Ignatius, a pro-Democratic but moderate Washington Post columnist, notes:

Democrats have gotten the border issue so wrong, for so long, that it amounts to political malpractice. The latest chapter—in which violent protesters could be helping President Donald Trump create a military confrontation he’s almost begging for as a distraction from his other problems—may prove the most dangerous yet.

When I see activists carrying Mexican flags as they challenge ICE raids in Los Angeles this week, I think of two possibilities: These “protesters” are deliberately working to create visuals that will help Trump, or they are well-meaning but unwise dissenters who are inadvertently accomplishing the same goal.

The Democrats’ own goals on the L.A. disorder are the mirror image of the mistakes made by the president himself in recent months. Just as Trump has overread his electoral mandate—going further and faster than many of his voters wanted and pursuing many unpopular policies—now the Democrats have assumed they have an “anti-mandate” to oppose more or less everything the president does.

Democrats do not have to cheer on every ICE raid, but they have to be seen to prioritize law and order and not deny the reality on the ground of violent protests.

Missing from their calculus is how popular many of the president’s policies remain. And that’s especially true on the two issues in question on the streets of L.A.: law and order, and illegal immigration.

Sure, President Donald Trump’s approval rating has declined some, and many of the things he has done are very unpopular. But the public still generally approves of Trump’s deportation program for illegal immigrants. Support is overwhelming when the focus is narrowed to those who have committed violent crimes. And the Republican Party is still preferred to the Democrats on crime, policing, and immigration, with particularly wide margins among the working class.

The Democrats risk going back to square one on the key issues undermining their brand. Recall that in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd and the nationwide movement sparked by it, the climate for police and criminal justice reform was highly favorable. But Democrats, taking their cue from progressive activists, blew it by allowing the party to be associated with toxic movement slogans like “defund the police.” Meanwhile, many Democratic officials declined to prosecute lesser crimes, degrading the quality of life in many cities under Democratic control.

It’s also worth recalling that prior to the election, a Democracy Corps survey asked voters what they would worry about the most if Biden won the election. Topping the list was “the border being wide open to millions of impoverished immigrants, many are criminals and drug dealers who are overwhelming America’s cities.”

But a very close second—just a point behind—was “crime and homelessness being out of control in cities and the violence killing small businesses and the police.” Among black, Hispanic, and Asian voters—as well as among white millennials, moderate Democrats, and political independents—crime and homelessness worries actually topped the list.

Since that low point in the immediate post-Floyd period, Democrats have made some modest progress in rehabilitating their image. They’ve had a big assist from the voters in this regard, particularly those in deep-blue municipalities like San Francisco, where excessively lenient progressives, like prosecutor Chesa Boudin, have been replaced with more moderate Democrats who are more willing to enforce the law.

But most Democrats are still reluctant to embrace an unapologetic law-and-order stance, as their reaction to the Los Angeles unrest demonstrates. Former British prime minister Tony Blair, while trying to rehabilitate his Labour Party at a time when voters saw it as implacably and hopelessly leftist, used to talk about being “tough on crime, and tough on the causes of crime.” Something along those lines would be a good Democratic mantra at the moment, as voters are still suspicious that the party is truly serious about tackling crime and quality-of-life issues.

The events in California are only accentuating those suspicions. Again, Democrats do not have to support every ICE raid, but they have to be seen to prioritize law and order and not deny the reality of violent protests.

Politico recently noted that “ambitious Democrats…are in the middle of a slow-motion Sister Souljah moment,” a reference to President Bill Clinton’s famous repudiation of his party’s left during the 1992 campaign. The Politico article cited gestures like that of Maryland governor Wes Moore’s veto of a reparations bill and Newsom’s admission that it seemed “unfair” for trans-identified boys to participate in girls’ sports. Former Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel cut to the chase and characterized the Democrats as generally “weak and woke.”

All of these men are likely contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028 and are making modest gestures to the center because of that. But what’s unfolding in California should make it glaringly obvious that Democrats aren’t yet ready for a real reckoning with the party’s toxic brand on immigration, crime, and public order and the fight with the party’s left that would inevitably produce. Voters are noticing and will penalize the Democrats accordingly.

Editor’s note: This is a revised version of an essay that originally appeared in The Free Press, where Ruy is a contributing writer.