Could a Murder be a turning point?
I know we’ve said this before, and thought this before. Many, many times. But could this be the moment that really, finally, turns those who can be turned against Trump?
Let’s acknowledge, first, that there is a healthy percentage of our population that will support him and this administration no matter what he does, no matter what countries he attacks, no matter what crimes ICE commits, no matter what obvious lies spew forth from Washington. After all, in 1974, when scandal-scarred Richard Nixon resigned the White House, a quarter of the population still approved of his performance as president.
So, there are those who will not be moved.
And although Trump’s approval ratings have sunk, more than 40 percent of the population generally still does support him. More than 50 percent disapprove, but somewhere around 5 to 10 percent haven’t yet chosen a side. And surely a significant number of those who do disapprove have nevertheless been content to stay on the sidelines, not engaged in acts of protest.
But in just the last week, there was, first, the brazen attack on Venezuela, which had to shake those who may have believed Trump’s promises against foreign entanglements. And then, and most important, there is the murder of Renée Nicole Good by Trump’s rampaging ICE agents.
This was not, after all George Floyd, who some percentage of the white population could dismiss as a black man with a criminal record. This was not Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a brown man who wasn’t born in this country.
This was a middle-class white woman. A mother of three. This was someone who was trying to get away from threatening masked men on a public street in a good neighborhood. This was a woman that those elusive white voters in the middle could have known. This was a woman who could have been their daughter or wife or book club friend.
This was someone whose murder was captured on video by multiple bystanders, making it clear that now no one, not even middle-class whites, is safe in Trump’s police state. And the videos also made it clear that Trump and his toadies are lying.
Deconstructions of the videos, by many media outlets, including The New York Times, leave little doubt that the story they are trying to tell, about a leftist agitator, a “domestic terrorist,” is obviously false, and show the shooting as an unjustified use of force. It’s possible a broad conclusion like that can erode support among the few remaining independents and moderates—the group that most influences broader public opinion trends.
Here’s historian Heather Cox Richardson on what the murder could mean:
“Good was a white, suburban mother, whose ex-husband told reporters she was a Christian stay-at-home mom . . . President Donald J. Trump’s people see that demographic as their base. If it turns on Trump, they are politically finished, as finished as elite southern enslavers were when Harriet Beecher Stowe reminded American mothers of the fragility of their own children’s lives to condemn the sale of Black children; as finished as the second Ku Klux Klan was when its leader kidnapped, raped and murdered 28-year-old Madge Oberholtzer; as finished as the white segregationists were when white supremacists murdered four little girls in church in 1963.”
It’s true major shifts in public approval often require sustained controversies that cut across partisan lines (like Watergate for Nixon or the 2008 financial crisis for Bush). And maybe only an economic collapse or raging inflation will finally do Trump in.
But the killing of Renée Good does seem like it could be a tide-turning moment, a real inflection point.
More than 10,000 people gathered in Minneapolis after Good’s murder, to both mourn and express their anger. Democratic politicians are finally expressing full uncensored outrage and anger. There have been protests and demonstrations and vigils across the country.
Is it reasonable to think that some of those who protested and demonstrated have finally just seen the light?