Biden Needs a Sister Souljah Month

I suggested a little while ago that Joe Biden needs a Sister Souljah moment, a reference to an incident in the 1992 presidential campaign when Bill Clinton criticized a race-baiting black rapper. Facing steep odds of winning the White House, Clinton took the chance of slightly alienating the radical wing of the Democratic party for the sake of reassuring centrists and conservative Democrats.

When I suggested this, the riots had abated for a while in favor of peaceful protests, and Biden held a strong lead in the polls. The cautious option was for Biden to take no chances and stand pat.

This week of protests and riots in Kenosha has changed that calculation. Public opinion is turning against the Black Lives Matter protests. A Marquette Law School poll completed before Kenosha showed support in Wisconsin for Black Lives Matter protests falling from 61-36—nearly a two-to-one approval-to-disapproval ratio—down to 48-48. We should assume it has gone done farther since then. Republicans will spend hundreds of millions of dollars over the next ten weeks trying to convince voters that they should punish Democrats for tolerating or excusing lawless violence.

Read the rest at The Bulwark.