I could be wrong, but don't be surprised if the return of students to campuses winds up having a big impact on the presidential race. 

Student activists have an outsized impact on our cultural life. Unlike the masses of Hamas supporters who pour out into the streets of our cities, in the eyes of the ruling elite, these students matter. What they say or do on college campuses will get far more attention than the thousands of Islamists who have poured out into our streets. 

The Islamists invade city streets, and while the elite live in cities, they really only live in tiny bubbles within those cities, largely unaffected by migrant crime, street protests, pervasive antisemitism, and even the blocking of traffic. It is ordinary people who are hurt, and the elite doesn't give a damn about ordinary people. 

You only see the excesses of the protests on Twitter/X. The real world has little sway over the minds of the media. 

That translates into relatively minimal coverage of the worst aspects of these protests and the celebration of the moral clarity displayed by these moral monsters. 

Some students at Columbia University say they are concerned with the school’s plan for handling antisemitic protesters as classes resume Tuesday.

More: https://t.co/HoDmQ6LXkj pic.twitter.com/FKhkT3aD6q

— NewsNation (@NewsNation) September 3, 2024

Student protesters matter to the elite, though. They disrupt the academic spaces revered by the elite, and when they desecrate the temples to ideology, elites care about that disruption, and violence winds up on TV. 

And make no mistake, when people see these cultural barbarians, they are repelled, while the progressive left sees them as role models. 

The Israel/Hamas conflict has provided the Left with the opportunity to portray Islamists as the good guys, but Americans aren't buying it. The relentless propaganda has soured Americans on Israel because they are fed a line about a fake "genocide," but when the war comes to home, and they see activists on TV celebrating "decolonization," destroying statues to our founders and tearing up campuses to which the middle class sends their kids, it will resonate. 

“We don’t want no two-state, we want all of it” chants as pro-Palestine protesters march in NYC pic.twitter.com/n51r0WSrxh

— Brendan Gutenschwager (@BGOnTheScene) September 2, 2024

And it won't look good for the Democrats. Everybody knows that Democrats support the protesters and only make noises about supporting Israel in order to get votes from ordinary people who choose Israel over terrorists. 

The protests have already started, and while they haven't gotten really ugly yet, they soon will. 

We look back on the protests over the Vietnam War and tell ourselves that the protests then were about peace and the protesters repressed. But at the time, ordinary Americans were repelled, and the Vietnam War protesters helped elect Richard Nixon, who at the time was about as popular as Trump. Less so, perhaps, although he gained in popularity over his presidency. 

The media may refrain from obsessing over these protests. Still, the Left loves academia as passionately as they hate MAGA Republicans, and what is happening on the campuses will be as attractive as catnip is to cats. I doubt they have the self-control to stop covering the excesses on the campuses. 

If, as I expect, the temperature rises on the campuses and the media covers the disruptions, it could sway the election toward Trump. He has the advantage of being full-throated in his support for Israel and of being hostile to the protesters. The Democrats need those very same protesters to come out and vote for them, so they will wind up dancing around, unable to pick a side. 

If I am right, and I rarely am in such matters, the college disruptions and the repellent anti-Americanism will give Trump a boost. Keep an eye on those campuses. They may turn out to be an important front in this November's election.