RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/aug/31/trumps-approval-rating-black-voters-soars-60-durin/

President Trump’s approval rating among Black voters jumped by 60% during the Republican National Committee even as Democrats and progressives sought to brand the Republican president as racist.

A HarrisX-Hill poll released Friday showed Mr. Trump’s net approval with Black voters from Aug. 22-25, which included the first two days of the RNC, rose to 24%, up from 15% in the pollster’s Aug. 8-11 survey.

The poll also found his approval rating among Hispanic voters during the same period increased slightly from 30% to 32%, while his support among White voters decreased by the same margin, ticking down from 54% to 52%.

The president’s overall approval rating remained underwater at 44%, but the surge of support from Black voters may reflect Mr. Trump’s outreach to minority communities as well as the convention’s showcasing of conservative Black lawmakers and luminaries.

Sen. Tim Scott, South Carolina Republican, was featured prominently Monday, the first night of the RNC, while Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron gave a speech Tuesday challenging some of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden’s pronouncements on race.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/09/01/joe_bidens_three_risky_choices__144106.html

Joe Biden’s quick trip to Pittsburgh and his speech there Monday condemning urban violence show Democrats now recognize they made a major mistake in ignoring the problem at their convention. They’ve read the polls and finally realize voters care about the arson, shootings, and looting — and their own safety. That’s a problem for the Biden campaign, which had almost nothing to say about the violence all summer. Now, they are doing “cleanup on Aisle 6” and there’s a lot of broken glass around.

“Rioting is not protesting,” the Democrats’ presidential nominee told the Carnegie-Mellon University audience. “Looting is not protesting. Setting fires is not protesting. … It’s lawlessness, plain and simple.” That’s true, but it was no less true two weeks or two months ago. Even now, Biden’s main thrust is less against the violence than against President Trump for “fomenting it” and “sowing chaos.” As Biden put it, “The simple truth is Donald Trump failed to protect America. So now he’s trying to scare America.”

That Biden was willing to leave home on short notice, fly to a swing state, and speak out about the rioting is the clearest indication yet that the election is tightening. Discussing the violence is one of three big, difficult decisions Biden faces as the campaign heats up. Each entails significant risks for a candidate who must hold together a fractious coalition and avoid major gaffes.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/09/01/its_trump_vs_biden_in_the_age_of_mob_politics__144110.html

They are the constituency no one wants, the crowd of “peaceful protesters” who aren’t all that peaceful. The one that does more to hurt than help even as both major political parties worry incessantly about how they can turn out voters ahead of an election billed, yet again, as “the most important in U.S. history.”

Maybe it is because they have a bad habit of looting liquor stores, torching businesses, and throwing rocks at cops. They are the mob, an amorphous rabble that has destroyed blocks’ worth of buildings from Minneapolis to Portland this summer, rioting and looting and turning November into a referendum on mob politics.

This disturbing factor in an already complex election environment has Joe Biden exasperated. The Democrats’ presidential  nominee has denounced violence in assorted statements and speeches, always defending the right to peacefully protest while also condemning the destruction of property and attacks on the police. His campaign still worried that the message wasn’t sticking, especially as Republicans ratcheted up their criticism, so on Monday the former vice president gave a full-throated rebuttal.

“You know me, you know my heart, you know my story, my family story,” Biden said from the floor of a Pittsburgh steel mill. “Ask yourself, do I look like a radical socialist with a soft spot for rioters? Really?  I want a safe America, safe from COVID, safe from crime and looting, safe from racially motivated violence, safe from bad cops. Let me be crystal clear, safe from four more years of Donald Trump.”

He views the violence as wanton destruction, Biden insisted, and worse — a wasted opportunity for reform. Trump, he argued, looks at the exact same carnage “and he sees a political lifeline.” Four hours later, the president responded.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/09/rasmussen_reports_noticed_something_very_fishy_about_polling.html

One of the most famous clues in a Sherlock Holmes mystery is what’s commonly referred to as “the dog that didn’t bark” or, as Holmes actually said, “The dog did nothing in the night-time.” Rasmussen Reports, which puts out a Daily Presidential Tracking Poll like clockwork, noticed that its competitors ceased barking (or, if you prefer, polling) after the two parties held their conventions. According to Rasmussen, which would know, this silence was unprecedented.

Rasmussen published a series of tweets on Monday openly snarking at its competitors for their silence. Moreover, whoever is writing Rasmussen’s tweets was not shy about identifying a reason for the other polling outfits’ unusual reticence: The narrative up until the conventions was that Biden was unstoppable; it’s now quite possible that he’s been stopped.

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/09/01/joe-bidens-craven-exercise-in-blame-shifting/

After a thug shot and killed a Trump supporter Saturday night in Portland, Democratic nominee Joe Biden suddenly got religion when it comes to leftist riots in our nation’s streets. The former vice president “challenged” President Donald Trump to “condemn violence,” then blamed Trump for “encouraging” it. Say what?

It goes beyond hypocrisy when Biden for months sat in his basement in near-total silence as his far-left supporters rioted, looted and burned U.S. cities, and his own party egged them on.

This same man chose as his vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris, who warned us all with a smile on her face during a television appearance that the protesting and rioting is “not gonna stop,” not even after the election.

Funny what a bit of bad polling will do.

For months, the 77-year-old Biden said and did nothing as Democrat-supported Antifa and Black Lives Matter followers violently protested across the country.

Said nothing, that is, until polls showed him losing major ground among voters after the hugely successful Republican National Convention, which focused on patriotic themes and roundly condemned the national violence.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-awakens-to-the-threat-of-urban-riots-11598894969?mod=opinion_lead_pos8

In a moment surely worthy of inclusion in some future edition of “Profiles in Courage,” Democrats seem to have decided it’s time to take a stand against the violence in American cities.

It has been a while coming. It’s true that Joe Biden has issued the occasional gentle bromide about the importance of nonviolent expression, but the louder message from him and Democratic leaders throughout the summer has been vocal support for the protests, even as they rained mayhem on America’s cities.

Following the latest escalations in Kenosha, Wis., and Portland, Ore., in the past week, Mr. Biden has called on all sides to desist—though it’s notable that he has decided that blame lies with President Trump and not the Democratic officials who have connived at the lawlessness in their cities.

The reason for this sudden assertion of the moral law seems not to be the casualty count or the misery into which so many lives have been plunged, but the verdict from opinion polls and focus groups. The lives of police officers and the hopes and dreams of small-business proprietors are a small matter to the ambitious pol, but nothing pierces his conscience more sharply than an unsettling conversation with a pollster.