Counterattack NOW! Time for a Biden “This is Trump’s America Tour” (Updated)

Today's post is another wonderful contribution from David Jay Morris, whom you may call D-Jay. Before we get into it, a few notes:

1. Joe Biden gave one hell of a speech. If you didn't catch it, check out the excerpts in the video above.

2. The "Reichstag fire on Ventura Blvd." story remains mysterious. Although accounts conflict, it does appear that one person fired at least one round from an apartment. It's fair to suspect that the apartment was empty, if only because a renter would have been identified by now. It's also fair to presume that the shooter escaped before the cops showed up.

3. Michael Reinoehl, an unstable pill-popper associated with Antifa, is under investigation for killing a pro-Trumper in Portland. Apparently, he stalked the Mayor of Portland the night before. (My heart goes out to Mayor Ted Wheeler, who is hated by both the extreme left and the right.) Most of the Antifa supporters I've seen on teevee were inoffensive flower children, but the movement was always bound to attract wackos.

(It has also attracted Nazi wolves in sheep's clothing, as noted in this previous post.)

I'll repeat what I said two years ago: Antifa is filled with naive ninnies who don't know the meaning of the phrase agent provocateur. Personally, I wish the group would disband. In 2017, Noam Chomsky had Antifa pegged:

"It's a major gift to the Right, including the militant Right, who are exuberant. What they do is often wrong in principle – like blocking talks – and is generally self-destructive. When confrontation shifts to the arena of violence, it's the toughest and most brutal who win – and we know who that is."

How should we respond? What is to be done? D-Jay has some ideas about that. His words appear below the asterisks.

* * *

Let’s face facts – Team Trump has finally found an anti-Biden approach that works and Joe’s lead is fading fast, especially in the critical swing states. The rioting and chaos in the streets following Black Lives Matter protests is a real thing and whether the one really flows from the other or not is completely irrelevant. With jingoistic, fear-stimulating rhetoric and carefully edited video clips, the Republican messaging machine has conflated the two and more and more people are buying it.

Biden’s lead in the polls is rapidly dropping. If he doesn’t recapture the narrative soon, the whole thing could slip away and we’ll be looking at who knows how many more years of unbridled Trump chaos and kleptocracy.

The time has come for a counterattack – NOW - before the meme of BLM = Riots = Biden = American Carnage has time to successfully complete its transition from conspiracy theory to conventional wisdom.

But what will work?

How about a little Karl Rovian style political ju-jitsu?

Time to swiftboat Donald Trump. Time to convert his current strength – the growing fear of chaos on the streets – into his own personal liability. If Biden and the Dems can get on message – and stay on it for once - this might not be a hard as it seems. With John Kerry in 2004, the Republican slime machine had to make a genuine war hero out to be a spineless wimp. With Trump, however, it’s a question of better exposing him as the greedy, corrupt, incompetent con-man he actually is and making sure the blame for his failures is assigned where it belongs.

Specifically, Biden should conduct a "This is Trump's America Tour." As George Packer suggested in his recent must read article in the Atlantic, he should go to Kenosha at once and speak from his heart. From there, he should continue on to Portland & other cities hit by rioting. In each of them, he needs to meet not only with the victims of alleged police violence, their families and BLM leaders, but also – and more importantly - with the owners of small businesses damaged by the riots, and yes, even the police.

At every city he should stand before a series of burned out buildings and say, “Look at this. This didn’t happen under the Obama-Biden administration. This is how it looks under Donald Trump’s watch. This is Trump's America! And if he’s elected again, this is just the beginning.

“Donald Trump wants this violence,” he should continue, “and he’s done everything he can to promote it, while doing nothing to deal with the underlying problems that created it.

This is Mitch McConnell’s America, too. If he and Trump really wanted to help, they could have done so long ago. On June 8th, the Democratic House of Representatives passed the Justice in Policing Act of 2020, which would go a long way towards instituting some much-needed, common sense police reforms. It’s been 87 days now, but Moscow Mitch won’t even bring it up for vote in the Senate, and Donald Trump won’t sign it. Why not? Because they don’t want peace or “law and order” on our streets. They want violence and hatred. They want to set American against American, because that’s the only way they can win. That’s the only way they can hold on to power.

“See these ruined businesses behind me? Seen the videos of chaos and violence on our streets? Welcome to Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell’s America. And if the American people re-elect them, it’s only going to get worse.

“I can promise you this – If Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are elected in November and you give us a Democratic House and Senate, we WILL bring real peace, safety and justice to America’s cities…and also to her towns, rural areas and, yes, suburbs.

“Let me take a minute to speak directly to all the people who have been participating in Black Lives Matters protests. Your cause is just and your courage and commitment has made America think and understand that while we have accomplished so much in the United States, we still have further to go. But Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell don’t want peace. They don’t want justice. They don’t want fairness, and they simply don’t understand that all men – and all women – were created equal, deserve equal opportunities and deserve to be free of prejudice, abuse and exploitation.

“Donald Trump doesn’t want an end to the violence in our streets. He wants to see more of it. And he wants to blame it all on you.

“So let’s not give him what he wants. Let’s not fall into his trap. Just as your cause may be, please ask yourselves if the time might not have come when the marches should be suspended. Not ended, suspended. Stay off the streets for now so that there is no chance for Trump and his cronies to try and blame any further violence on you.

“Let the blame go back where it belongs – right into the lap of Donald Trump.

“And Mr. Trump – don’t talk to us about “law and order” until you’ve showed us your tax return and answered all the questions about your dealings over the years with Russian mobsters. Tell us why Michael Cohen had to go to jail for his pay-offs to the porn star you slept with while your wife was pregnant, when you – “Individual One” – the person who put him up to it, get to walk around free and think about pardoning yourself. Tell us about all the people you cheated through Trump University and why you and your family aren’t allowed to operate a charity anymore. Explain to us why it is okay for you to loot the US Treasury through all your shady emoluments and the exorbitant fees the Secret Service has to pay to protect you while your goofing off on your golf courses instead of doing the people’s business. And please explain to us why you think it’s okay for you to desecrate the White House – the people’s house – with a crass, and illegal, political spectacle. You get a special exemption from the Hatch Act because you’re the president, but every other government employee who participated in that broke the law and they’re all liable to prosecution. They broke the law because you told them to.

“This is the United States, and here, laws are meant to apply just as much to people at the top as they do to those at the bottom. In our country, no one is above the law, so don’t you dare try to lecture the American people about “law and order” until you’ve accounted and atoned for your own illegal and immoral behavior.

“As well-known as you are for projecting your own faults and insecurities onto others, people might start to think that the main reason you’re running for a second term is to keep yourself out of jail.”

This is the kind of thing Mr. Biden himself needs to do, regardless of the reaction on the more radical side of the BLM movement and the Democratic Party. If African American and BLM movement leaders would like to take the real opportunity in front of them to deal a fatal blow to Trump’s candidacy, they would then follow his lead and echo his call for the protestors to stand down. This would put Biden in the position of having single-handedly put a stop to the events which Trump and his supporters claim is the root of the violence.

Rather than Biden being cast as the “puppet” of BLM and the radical left, they would be seen as willingly submitting to his strong leadership.

Trump’s most powerful argument would be destroyed.