Its not enough that President Trumps dark vision of American carnage is being made manifest by his own actions in a politically motivated war on the nations cities. Now Trump is saying that his Democratic rival for the presidency, Joe Biden, is at war with the suburbs.
In tandem with the occupying army of federal troops he sent to Portland, Ore., Seattle, and elsewhere, Trump has opened up a new front in his flailing reelection campaign. His tweets and campaign ads now try to portray the former vice president as a dangerous undercover agent for a left-wing mob that wants to abolish the suburbs along with the Second Amendment, religion, and anything else Trump thinks his base holds dear.
Joe Biden and his bosses from the radical left want to significantly multiply what theyre doing now, Trump said in a meandering speech earlier this month. And what will be the end result is you will totally destroy the beautiful suburbs. Watch out, soccer moms: Joe Biden is coming for your gas grill and your white picket fence.
Trump is right to be concerned about the suburban vote, since no Republican presidential candidate has won without that bloc since at least 2004. And he is currently losing them badly to Biden in opinion polls. Trumps most transparent appeal to these voters came in late July, when he tweeted: The suburban housewives of America must read this article. Biden will destroy your neighborhood and your American Dream! The tweet linked to an article by conservative columnist Betsy McCaughey blasting an Obama-era zoning reform.
Coincidentally (or not) McCaugheys article came after several weeks of Trump telegraphing his intent to dismantle the fair housing rule. He raised the specter of integrated multifamily housing, bringing who knows into your suburbs and causing home values to drop like a rock.
Never mind that, in the last five years, suburban home prices have only increased. Or that the Obama rule which requires communities seeking federal aid to study whether discriminatory housing practices exist in their towns and devise a plan to mitigate them is relatively modest. Trumps message is clear enough: Only he can protect suburban (read: white) women from the lawless mayhem overtaking American cities.
In fact, Trumps tirades reveal how little he understands about todays suburbs, not to mention todays women. Over the past few decades, the suburbs have shed their Donna Reed image and become more like small cities: more diverse racially, with public transit, denser housing, and walkable downtowns. Even in red states, cities tend to vote Democratic, and the lines defining the suburban rings around them are blurring.
As to the housewives, they may have more in common with the wall of moms who have come out in solidarity with the Portland demonstrators than Trump imagines. The issues they worry about how to control the coronavirus, how to return their children safely to school, how to earn a decent wage or find affordable childcare, how to live in peaceful and just communities have been ignored in favor of stoking anger and resentment. The majority of workers on the front line of health care crisis are women. Trumps bullying everyone to reopen schools and businesses amid a spiking death toll doesnt make them feel safe.
Trump may be fueling the unrest in cities all run by very liberal Democrats as a desperate tactic to save his candidacy. But he also feeds on violent spectacle. Trumps rallies often have the vibe of a British soccer match, with their undercurrent of hooliganism. In a 2016 rally, he said of a heckler, Id like to punch him in the face. Speaking about protesters at another event in Iowa, he suggested to the crowd, knock the crap out of them, would you? With the COVID-19 disaster sidelining his rallies, teargassing mothers in bicycle helmets may be the next best thing.
Trumps entire worldview is rooted in combatively exploiting divisions: native against immigrant, rich against poor, and now city against suburb. But his mounting failures in leadership, judgment, and basic human empathy are greater than any superficial divides.
Rene Loths column appears regularly in the Globe.
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