The national media is always obsessed with one side of the aisle seizing on current events. It never seems to occur to them that people have caught on to this partisan framing of issues as a way to avoid legitimate questions. Anyway, here’s the opening of a story Politico published this afternoon:

Trump administration officials on Thursday seized on the recent police shooting of Jacob Blake and the resulting unrest to argue that Democrats are encouraging lawlessness, leading Joe Biden to accuse the president of cravenly exploiting a national tragedy.

Top Trump advisers argued rioting that has sprung up adjacent to peaceful protests over racial injustice would crystallize voters behind Trump’s “law and order” agenda. Democrats, the president’s team contested, have failed for decades to address the issues that have roiled the country all summer.

Are the Republicans making the argument that Democrats aren’t doing a great job controlling the chaos that has at times has overwhelmed cities this summer? Yes, they definitely are doing that and here’s the reason: It’s true.

From three straight months of nightly protests/riots in Portland, to Seattle’s mayor comparing CHAZ/CHOP to a block party until people are killed, to Chicago’s historic weekends of violence and looting, to the looting in New York, to the increase in violent crime and the rapid resignations of police officers, right up to the chaos in Kenosha this week—it’s really not that hard to make a case that left-wing mayors aren’t looking especially capable of dealing with this moment.

Listen, I’m aware that there are all sorts of counter-arguments to be made. Mayor Durkan has blamed Seattle’s city council for some of the problems. Mayor Lightfoot has blamed Cook County prosecutor Kim Foxx. And nearly everyone has blamed President Trump at some point.

There’s plenty of blame to go around at this point and that’s really what has people worried. As the NY Times pointed out today, some people in Kenosha are looking around and thinking maybe President Trump could do a better job than their Democratic mayor or governor. And frankly, I think that is scaring the bejeesus out of Democrats. And it’s why people like CNN’s Don Lemon and Jonathan Chait are issuing public warnings:

Democrats need to be extremely concerned about what's happening in Wisconsin, where support for BLM has gone from +25 to +0 in 2 months. https://t.co/2wNMWoW6it

— Jonathan Chait (@jonathanchait) August 27, 2020

The underlying assumption, and I think it’s a correct one, is that BLM riots hurt Democrats. That’s a message the party does not want to hear right now. In fact, just a couple of months ago, a progressive data researcher was cancelled for saying almost exactly that. And they still don’t want to hear it. The only way they can hear it at all is as dark machinations of people with bad intent. Hence, another winner by the Washington Post’s Philip Bump today making the argument:

“There was a quote today from a restaurateur in Wisconsin, saying, ‘Are you protesters trying to get Donald Trump reelected?’ ” Conway said. “He knows, full stop, and I guess Mayor Pete knows, full stop, that the more chaos and anarchy and vandalism and violence reigns, the better it is for the very clear choice on who’s best on public safety and law and order.”

The better it is, indeed! But let’s stop for a moment and consider what’s happening.

What Conway said here isn’t a plot. She’s saying that Democrats know the chaos is wearing thin on people and as it becomes a bigger issue, they’ll turn to the person seen as most likely to confront it. What Bump takes from this is that Trump wants chaos. But what Conway is saying is people are getting tired of chaos and Democrats know it is hurting them. Again, that’s what Chait said above and that’s what that NY Times story said today as well. Conway is right about the dynamic.

So, yes, Trump’s campaign is arguing he and his party could do a better job restoring order which is currently lacking in many places. Like Philip Bump, Joe Biden is unfairly framing this as Trump rooting for violence:

Trump “views it as a political benefit,” Biden told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Thursday afternoon. “This is the same guy, when people came out of Charlottesville and a young woman gets killed, they’re spewing hate, and their veins bulging, carrying swastikas … he says there are very fine people on both sides. He just keeps pouring fuel on the fire. He’s encouraging this.”

Later in the same MSNBC interview, Biden said the riots were a distraction from COVID and the daily death toll. Wait a minute, is Biden rooting for people to die from the virus because he’s highlighting the death toll? Are Democrats hoping the vaccines won’t get here until after November? That’s really the same exact argument Biden is making above, i.e. Trump wants cities to burn so he can run on the issue. But don’t hold your breath waiting for Philip Bump to write a piece taking that claim seriously.

I think you could say that both campaigns are seizing on the issues at hand while simultaneously accusing the other side of seizing on other issues with bad intent (which coincidentally aren’t as good for them politically). But it sure feels like the national media represents one side of that argument a lot more often than the other.

Update: I missed this earlier but Politico also published a piece today warning that the riots might hurt Democrats. This went up about 2 hours before the ‘Republicans are seizing’ story:

As this battleground state grapples with social unrest, some Democrats fear that the looting and rioting and clashes are feeding Trump’s argument that this is what life would be like under the so-called radical left. The worry is that especially among suburban swing voters, the more upheaval and violence they witness, the more their sympathy for peaceful Black Lives Matters protesters will wane.

“There’s no doubt it’s playing into Trump’s hands,” said Paul Soglin, who served as mayor of Madison, on and off, for more than two decades. “There’s a significant number of undecided voters who are not ideological, and they can move very easily from Republican to the Democratic column and back again.They are, in effect, the people who decide elections. And they are very distraught about both the horrendous carnage created by police officers in murdering African Americans, and … for the safety of their communities.”

All of which reinforces my point about people raising an alarm because they’re worried. And that’s why many in the media are trying to frame this as a ‘dastardly Republicans seize’ story, because they know this could hurt Dems and they want to blunt that impact if they can.