No Coincidence

Robert W. Merry writes in The National Interest there have been eight periods of U.S. street violence of the sort we're seeing this year in Ferguson and Baltimore which were followed by presidential elections.

The elections in which social unrest played a significant part were: 1888, 1892, 1896, 1920, 1932, 1968, 1972 and 1992.

Merry summarizes the public unrest preceding each of the eight elections. In seven of the eight the political party of the sitting president lost the White House in the subsequent election, the exception being the Nixon reelection of 1972.

It is unlikely this finding is a coincidence. Merry concludes,

This history suggests it is foolhardy for any president or presidential candidate to underestimate the negative political impact of major civic street violence. The American people don’t like it, and they tend to assign responsibility to the incumbent president or party.

If this disruption doesn’t constitute a net negative for next year’s Democratic presidential candidate, it wouldn’t take much more to get there.

Hat tip to RealClearPolitics for the link.