Rock Bottom

So many black men have died at the hands of the police that I can't comment on it anymore than to say it's wrong and it shouldn't happen, because I can't find anything more eloquent and verbose to offer than that.  But the Minneapolis case of George Floyd - which sparked a riot that led to fires in Minneapolis - requires me to comment here.  When are the police going to get it?  You dehumanize black men, you dehumanize Americans . . . and America.   

And this is all happening in the backdrop of the United States having passed the number of 100,000 COVID-19 deaths.  We've sunk to a new all-time low. 

And what is the guy in the White House Donald J. Trump, doing?  Stoking the embers of resentment, calling the demonstrators "thugs" (the arsonists were outsiders having little to do with the protests) and demanding that they be shot, hoping to tilt Minnesota into the Republican column this fall with his divisive "law and order" rhetoric,", which Nixon used in 1968, a year after the Newark riot.  (New Jersey would go Republican in a presidential election six consecutive times beginning in 1968.)

And something else happened in Minneapolis that must have warmed Trump's heart - a CNN reporter was arrested while covering the riot.  (He has since been released.)

Joe Biden is expected to address the Minnesota Democratic convention tomorrow. This could be a, if not the, defining moment of hi presidential campaign  He will have the opportunity to call for calm, reach out to black voters in a meaningful way, and show more empathy and maturity than Trump all at once - if he balances his comments right - more vividly than in his most recent TV interviews.

However, he can forget about choosing Amy Klobuchar as his running mate.  It turns out that Officer Derick Chauvin, the fired policeman in the center of the Floyd killing, had had numerous complaints against him in the early 2000s, when Klobuchar was Hennepin County attorney (Hennepin County includes Minneapolis).  Klobuchar failed to prosecute Chauvin in another incident where he shot a suspect to death.  Her vice presidential hopes just burned to the ground with those buildings.