This Newsweek article (read it here) is titled, “Has 2024 Campaign Rhetoric Gone Too Far? Analysts Weigh In.”
Let’s start with what people agree on:
“Polling suggests that most Americans agree that the country is too divided by politics. An Ipsos survey … found that 81 percent of respondents agreed that the U.S. was ‘more divided than united,’ with 78 percent saying that the country was ‘less united than ten years ago.’ Despite the divide, a 69 percent majority agreed ‘that most Americans want the same things out of life,’ according to the poll.”
Why, then, are Americans at each others’ throats? First of all, incendiary politics and political violence aren’t new; they’ve long been part of the American political landscape. As Newsweek notes, “In the 1960s, the country suffered multiple high-profile political assassinations, politically motivated domestic terror attacks and other acts of violence.”
Back then, America was divided over the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement. Today, the issues are different, but the rancor is just as intense. Now cultural issues dominate, but “people express partisan hostilities today that are as severe as racial divisions used to be.”
For readers who didn’t live through the 1960s, I can tell you the years following President Kennedy’s assassination were tumultuous. There were mass protests against the Vietnam War; anti-war protesters clashed with police, took over campus buildings, and blocked freeways. Radical groups planted bombs in public buildings. Opposition to the war drove a president from office in 1968; and protestors outside that summer’s Democratic convention in Chicago were brutalized by what observers called a “police riot.”
Meanwhile, white southerners reacted violently to desegregation, with white police attacking black civil rights marchers with clubs, dogs, and fire hoses. “Freedom Rider” buses were set afire, black churches were burned, and Klansmen terrorized and murdered civil rights activists. Civil rights leader Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in the spring of 1968, setting off deadly rioting in major cities.
A few weeks later, Senator Robert Kennedy, was assassinated while campaigning for president. In the chaos, Richard Nixon won the presidency, then pursued a losing war for four more years, prolonging the social upheaval; the majority of America’s Vietnam casualties occurred on his watch.
All that tumult gave rise to the “hippie” movement, a social phenomenon associated with draft resistance, rejection of “the establishment,” experiments with communes, psychedelic drugs and “free love,” and clashes with hippie-hating cops who were called “pigs.”
A more polarized country, and so much social conflict, was hard to imagine … until now. In this presidential election year, Newsweek notes, there have been violent threats against both major candidates, and “political scientists largely agree that the U.S. has been grappling with an era of elevated and divisive rhetoric.”
Is the rhetoric to blame? And if so, is one side more culpable than the other? Republicans blamed Kamala Harris for inciting violence against Trump by accusing him of being a threat to democracy, but political scientists see no connection between her rhetoric and those incidents. One said, “I cannot think of any of her rhetoric that can be deemed as aimed at inflaming or inciting violence among her supporters,” and pointed out that “Harris has been consistent in forcefully condemning political violence as a result of the attempts on Trump’s life.”
Something Republicans won’t acknowledge is that both would-be assassins were former Trump supporters, and his outdoor rallies and golf outings leave him more exposed, because those venues are very difficult to secure. The Secret Service warned him against going to that golf course, but he ignored them and played there anyway.
Why shouldn’t Democrats campaign on the democracy issue? Republicans no longer respect our democratic norms, the will of the majority, or the right of every citizen to vote. For millions of Americans, that’s a top-of-mind issue, and you can’t expect Democratic politicians to stay silent about it. The Republicans are acting like Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election and the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol never happened.
Comparing Republican rhetoric to Democratic rhetoric, “several of the experts that Newsweek spoke with agreed that rhetoric used by Harris and Biden pales in comparison to Trump’s history of incendiary rhetoric.” One professor said Harris and Walz “don’t even register in terms of inflammatory rhetoric” based on his “research in political violence over the past 30 years.” He adds, “Trump’s rhetoric is a different matter,” providing several well-known examples I won’t rehash here. It’s almost enough to say Trump’s “demonizing rhetoric … speaks for itself.”
One example does deserve special mention: “Trump also found time on Sunday to declare his hatred of Taylor Swift.” Hating on a pop singer? Why? Because she endorsed Harris. It’s characteristically Trumpian to not just disagree with, but to vilify, anyone who opposes him. Another professor says “the nasty and demonizing rhetoric has gone way too far.” He didn’t specifically point to Trump, but doesn’t have to; we all know who he’s talking about.
At the end of every Newsweek article, readers are invited to rate its fairness. Predictably, “Most readers rated this article Left-leaning/Unfair.” It’s true the article focuses criticism on Trump and the Republicans, but that’s deserved. They’re the ones rejecting election results, talking about “Second Amendment solutions” and threatening civil war, and flooding political discourse with lies, fabrications, racism, and bigotry. Their political lies and incendiary rhetoric led directly to what happened in Springfield, Ohio, this week, which is merely one of a long string of incidents.
So, if the shoe fits, they should wear it.