Rioting is a tactic that the left uses to impose its political will and tries to capitalize on riots, chaos, and fear. And propaganda is one part of the Democrats' strategy to defeat Republicans at the ballot box.
Far from dissociating themselves from the violence, Democrats try to pin it on Republicans. That's why the January 6th riot was seen as a Godsend to them--it was the first riot in living memory where Republicans actually did participate in any appreciable violence, even though it was "mostly peaceful."
The George Floyd riots were caused by Republicans. The ICE riots are as well, they argue. They hope that laying the blame on Trump will help them win the midterm elections in 2026.
The summer of 2025 will undoubtedly be a repeat of the Summer of Love we saw in 2020, which Democrats believe helped them win the presidency that year. I doubt that the riots helped them then--COVID was a much bigger factor, as was the massive and successful movement to change how the election was conducted. If anything, I think the riots hurt them, but we will never know for sure.
Whatever one can say about 2020, I am pretty confident that the riots this time around will harm the Democrats at the ballot box. They may or may not be a defining issue by next year--the economy always dominates--I am confident that suburban voters will not reward Democrats for backing the wrong side in the war in our streets.
The suburban vote used to be pretty reliably Republican, back when the suburbs were mostly populated by voters who had fled the chaos of the riots in the 1960s and 70s--those riots gave us Richard Nixon as president. The 1968 Chicago riots at the Democratic convention crystallized in everybody's mind that Democrats were the party of chaos, and the fact that Democratic Party politicians are backing the rioters and their cause this time around will likely solidify the idea that Democrats embrace those who burn things down, assault police, all while waving the flags of a foreign country and a terrorist organization.
Blue city voters are inherently insane, so it's likely that most of them will continue to back the Democrats, while rural and exurban voters are already on Donald Trump's side. Suburban voters, though, are mainly in the laptop class, consider themselves public-spirited, especially compassionate, and have been leaning Democrat for a few years now.
The riots could change that, because while the suburbs are not being directly affected by the riots, suburban voters are.
This is for a lot of reasons. Proximity to the violence, of course, is a major factor, as is the reality that most suburban folks think of themselves as being from the metropolitan area, not their particular town. Somebody who is from the Minneapolis or Saint Paul area, when asked by somebody from another state, will say they live in the Twin Cities, or Minneapolis, or St. Paul. They rarely say "I am from Plymouth, New Brighton, or an inner-ring suburb.
I have a friend who grew up in Cherry Hill, NJ, but if you ask him where he is from, he says "Philadelphia," which is in another state but right next door. My wife will say she was from Detroit when asked, not West Bloomfield. It is natural to do so. She follows the Detroit Lions and the Tigers, not the other animal teams like the Chicago Bears.
Additionally, suburban residents often visit the central city, which serves as the cultural hub of their region. The highways being blocked often screw up traffic for suburban folks, and the crime increases often spill over into the suburbs.
In other words, people who just want peace and for whom "social justice" is merely a nice sounding concept which they support in the abstract actually HATE the chaos that the Democrats are cheering on. They want it ended, even if they wince at Donald Trump deploying troops. The troops are a bad look, but the chaos is a worse reality. They just want peace and order.
As the 2024 elections showed, Democrats have been misreading the room rather badly of late. They thought Biden would appeal to voters and that attacking Republicans would help them; the opposite was true. They believed that embracing alphabet ideology would be a political boon. Nope.
And they apparently believe that defending MS 13, Tren de Aragua, and 20-30 million illegal aliens will be a political winner, and that cheering on assassinations, riots, and attacking law enforcement will endear them to millions.
It's a bad bet. The suburbs are pivot points in elections--it is where the swing voters live, for the most part. It is also the place where issues such as law and order matter the most in swinging votes. If the issue is mushy "compassion," suburban voters--especially women--will warm to the Democrats.
If the issue is law and order, Republicans will likely benefit.
