RUTHFULLY YOURS

Americans are beset by a “crisis of confidence” in their governing institutions. Economic anxiety abounds. Crises overseas and on the country’s southern border have made geopolitics into a kitchen-table issue in American households. And millions of Americans are increasingly convinced that the country is on the precipice of an outbreak of political violence. Recent events suggest those fears are amply justified. A multiweek campaign of unabated criminal unrest prosecuted by opponents of Israel’s defensive war against Hamas could be nearing a deadly crescendo.

Anti-Israel demonstrators mounted a coordinated effort to block access to two of America’s busiest transportation hubs over the Christmas holiday: New York City’s John F. Kennedy International Airport and Los Angeles International Airport. The attempt to tie up airport traffic is already responsible for violent interactions between protesters and the targets of their harassment. Over the weekend, demonstrators temporarily shuttered JFK’s Terminal 4 as videos taken from the scene showed them releasing balloons near the airport runways — an exercise designed to ground commercial aircraft by imperiling travelers’ lives.

When the protests against the exercise of Israel’s right to its own defense aren’t menacingly violent, they’re a nuisance designed to irritate as many Americans as possible. The protesters are as likely to be found gumming up the works of holiday celebrations — ruining parades, terrorizing tourists, and generally ensuring that “joy is canceled” for most Americans — as besieging the Democratic Party’s political headquarters or even killing their opponents.

This is no distraction. College campuses are increasingly compelled by their unruly student bodies to crack down on disruptive activities that could in no way be considered the mere exercise of free expression. The patience that administrators initially displayed toward their most obstreperous students ran out when the antisocial campus bacchanalia, and their tolerance thereof, did reputational damage to their host institutions. Democrats would do well to follow their lead. It’s time for the party to make some examples of the worst offenders.

As a general rule, the American voting public tends to regard crises abroad as low-priority issues unless those crises produce at least one of two conditions: U.S. casualties or the measurable loss of American prestige. It is, therefore, unique to see voters assign real salience to conflicts abroad in which the U.S. is not directly engaged. The latest AP-NORC survey gauging voters’ priorities ahead of the 2024 election season found “foreign policy” rocketing to the top tier of voters’ concerns. “Some 46% of Republicans named it, up from 23% last year,” the AP reported. “And 34% of Democrats list foreign policy as a focal point, compared with 16% a year ago.” The number of Americans who expressed concern over the prospect of “U.S. involvement overseas” ticked up from 5 to 20 percent in that same interval, but that disparity suggests that a significant number of respondents are expressing their concerns about how foreign conflicts are destabilizing the domestic American landscape.

Republicans and Democrats mean different things when they tell pollsters they fear the prospect of domestic political violence. Democrats associate the threat with the January 6 rioters and white supremacists. Republicans fear the designs of far-left radicals and rioters. Independent voters are likely to cite all of the above, while placing special emphasis on “riots” and “protests.” But while the Democratic president can do little more than inveigh against far-right extremism — an exercise that cannot be wholly divorced from the pursuit of political advantage — Joe Biden can and, indeed, must make an effort to separate himself and his party from the extremists on the fringes of the progressive movement.

There’s no love lost between conventional Democratic political operatives and the agitators who seem to believe that making life as miserable as possible for everyone else is a productive enterprise. But you might not know it, given that the president’s party appears committed to mollycoddling the demonstrators. Just as most Americans know precisely where the January 6 rioters’ political sympathies lay, the voting public is under no illusions as to those of the anti-Israel protesters. Joe Biden and his co-partisans — particularly those who occupy positions of authority in America’s urban centers, where so much of this disruption is taking place — would benefit from declaring a public divorce from the far Left’s more anarchic elements.

The failure to do so is conspicuous, and it leaves voters with uncharitable conclusions about the Democratic Party, whose calculations appear cynical. You don’t have to be a lettered social scientist to know that the White House is deeply troubled by the cratering of Joe Biden’s support among young voters. You don’t have to follow the news closely to know that collapse seems to have been precipitated by the administration’s support for Israel’s campaign against Hamas. It is, therefore, intuitive to conclude that the Biden White House has opted to avoid directly confronting this menacing protest movement in order to minimize the risk to Biden’s political brand.

If a critical mass of voters draw this conclusion, it could prove politically fatal to his reelection prospects. It would likely soften the public’s apprehension toward a second Trump administration. After all, even if Trump’s record in the pursuit of “law and order” was spotty at best, his notional support for the preservation of domestic security is the tribute vice pays to virtue. The chaos candidate who promises to deliver the rule of law may have more appeal than the normalcy candidate who delivered only chaos.

The demonstrators have made their goals plain. They are upping the ante to the point at which their activism will produce terrible and preventable outcomes. It would be profoundly unwise for Democrats to assume that this will all blow over, demanding minimal effort on their parts and leaving no lasting political scars in the process. That is wishful thinking. It’s time for Joe Biden to name names and make a clean break with the protesters and the groups behind them. Either that, or Democrats will own the consequences of their inaction.