There’s an important distinction, which is that in 1968, Nixon was running as a challenger and promising to restore law and order. Trump, in contrast, is already president. And as the incumbent, it’s much harder to run on a message to restore law and order when major American cities descended into chaos under your watch.

When I noted this on Twitter, the defense of Trump was that the violence is happening in cities run by Democrats. But that doesn’t really change anything. Reelecting Trump won’t change Democratic control of the cities. So if Trump was unable to overcome Democratic mismanagement of urban centers and restore order in his first term, why would he be able to do so in a second term?

One could also imagine Joe Biden arguing to white suburbanites that the way to restore order is to address the root causes of the violence and to have a president who doesn’t say incendiary things during an already volatile situation.