In Kenosha, Biden will test his promise to unify the nation

In Kenosha, Biden will test his promise to unify the nation

 WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) - Campaigning for more than a year as a reassuring and unifying figure, Joe Biden faces the most intense test yet of his central speech when he travels to Kenosha, Wisconsin, a city ravaged by police and violence. of protest that makes it a microcosm of the nation's election year that features systemic racism.

The 77-year-old former vice president, who is traveling two days after President Donald Trump visited the same city, plans to meet Thursday with the family of Jacob Blake, who remains hospitalized after being shot seven times in the back by a white police officer. as authorities. tried to arrest him. Biden also plans a community discussion that he said would attract business figures, civic leaders and law enforcement officials.

"It's about making sure we move forward," Biden told reporters Wednesday. He added that "it will not tell Kenosha what to do," but will encourage the community to "talk about what to do."

Falling exactly two months before Election Day, the trip presents Biden with opportunities and risks as he tests his promise, made over and over again for 16 months, that he can "unify the country" and find consensus even where it is not obvious. The focus has always been an intentional contrast to Trump, a president who thrives on conflict. But the distinction has been sharpened during a summer of protests across the country, most of them peaceful, but some of them, like in Kenosha, turned violent and destructive.

Biden is a white man pushed for the Democratic nomination by black voters. Since the May 25 death of George Floyd, a black man murdered by a white Minneapolis police officer, Biden has called for a review of the American police and has embraced a national conversation about racism. The significance of the moment was a factor in which Biden chose California Sen. Kamala Harris as the first black woman to join a major party presidential bid.

Trump, meanwhile, has responded with broad condemnations of the protesters, outright defense of law enforcement, and denials that black and tan Americans face barriers that whites do not face - measures aimed at his overwhelmingly white political base.

The president continued his “law and order” mantra during his own trip to Kenosha on Tuesday. He toured the damaged buildings and discussed ways to quell the disturbances with law enforcement officials. Trump was greeted by supporters who occasionally mixed with Black Lives Matter organizers and yelled at them.

"These are not acts of peaceful protest but actually internal terror," Trump said.

Despite repeated questions from journalists, the president refused to address racism in the country or in its police departments. Instead, he claimed again that a Biden presidency would bring unrest and destruction to American cities. That echoes Trump's false accusations that Biden backs violent protests and calls by activists to "defund the police."

In fact, Biden has repeatedly denounced the violence, from a June 2 speech after Floyd's death to a Monday speech that his campaign quickly turned into a one-minute digital and television ad. The campaign has spent $ 45 million to circulate the ad, which has both English and Spanish versions, on national cable networks and in local markets in Arizona, Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania. and Wisconsin.

However, the need for the announcement highlights Biden's tightrope as he openly discusses the complexities of the moment as he faces a president whose brief political career, and his business career before that, has been defined by strong absolutes.

Biden repeated Wednesday that “engaging in acts of violence (burning, looting, the rest) in the name of protest is wrong. And that person must be held accountable for their actions. " But he defended the First Amendment guarantees that "protest is a right."

He praised the law enforcement.

“Look, the vast majority of police officers are good, decent and honorable women and men. They wear that shield every morning. They have the right to return home that night safely, the vast majority, ”he said.

But then he spoke words that Trump doesn't say: "Bad cops."

Good officers, Biden said, "want to get rid of bad cops more than anyone, because it reflects on them."

He defends his proposals to reform police surveillance, not to "defund the police," as Trump falsely accuses Biden of supporting, but to demand that local forces accept certain best practices to obtain federal funds and invest more in services, such as services. mental. Health counseling, aimed at alleviating social problems that concern the police, sometimes with violent consequences.

Biden noted that "he has received overwhelming support from law enforcement throughout my career," alluding to the endorsement of the police unions as a US senator and vice president. But it was Trump who introduced the police union leaders and families of the fallen officers at his presidential nomination convention. And it was Biden on Wednesday calling for a "full investigation" into the police shootings and saying that the officers who shot Blake should be charged with a crime.

To a large extent, Biden has asked about the difficulty of campaigning on nuance, if he did not define his candidacy that way.

He is the center-left establishment figure who is far too conservative on universal health, college tuition assistance, climate action and taxes for his party's noisy rising left flank. But he has moved far enough to the left that many Republicans still call him radical. He is the old ally of the police union now embracing the Black Lives Matter movement, the septuagenarian white man who leads a racially diverse party that gets the majority of its votes from women.

Biden teased Wednesday how he thinks he can make that work in Kenosha and, if he defeats Trump, in the White House.

"I spent my whole life ... uniting people, uniting the community and the police, uniting business and civic leaders," he said, projecting the national moment in terms of its possibilities.

“There have been so many fissures exposed as a result of what happened that people are now realizing, 'My God, I didn't know that people in that circumstance didn't have that kind of help. I didn't know ‘,‘ he said. "What a great opportunity to unite the country."