It matters if Biden actually says he opposes the violence and doesn’t want to defund the police, but not that much. Because if the Republicans can’t pin the violence directly onto Biden, they’ll pin it on the Democrats in general, and Biden is their candidate. That’s what Democrats would do if the tables were turned. If you can’t get the candidates to say things crazy, you go nut-fishing. You come up with a Christine O’Donnell, and cast HER as the face of the Republican party.
Unfortunately, the Republicans have a rich target environment. There are plenty of Democratic mayors, governors, congresspeople, and Senators who have lent support to the protests, refused to enforce the law, actually defunded police (or say they are in the process), etc. So if Biden comes out every day and denounces the violence, the Republicans will simply say the problem is with the Democratic party as a whole, or with its activist wing that the rest of the Democrats won’t do anything about.
For example, Bill DeBlasio has been acting like a complete idiot. All Republicans have to do is run some of his crazy statements, then find a clip of Biden saying DeBlasio is a great mayor or something, and now Biden owns DeBlasio’s idiocy. That’s what Democrats would do to a Republican, so expect the Republicans to do the same - and be prepared to counter it.
And there’s a trap waiting if Joe comes out and says he’ll crack down on the violence and Kamala is just the person to prosecute it. You’ll get this from the Trump campaign:
"Joe Biden now says he’s going to ‘crack down’. Of course that’s Joe’s instinct - he is the person who helped author the 1994 crime bill that put so many young black men in jail. Donald Trump is the first president to sign significant justice reform - and the unfair laws that most needed reforming are the ones Joe Biden helped put into law.
As for Kamala Harris, she put 1500 people in jail for minor marijuana offenses. She fought to keep exculpatory evidence out of court that would have exonerated many people. The police aren’t the problem - it was prosecutors like Kamala Harris, an ambitious politician willing to throw innocent black people into jail to achieve her own ambitions."
I’m not going to debate whether that argument is fair or not. The question is, if it’ made, how do Democrats refute it?
Here’s another potential trap that Trump might set: He might come out in favor of pot legalization, just so that he can contrast with Harris putting 1500 people in jail for pot offenses. He could also pull a stunt like pardoning some of Harris’s convictions (making sure there are some photogenic black people on the list) because she was ‘crooked’.
The problem for Democrats here is that in an era of defund the police and smash the system, the Democrats are running perhaps the most hard-line law enforcement people in the party. In any other year, that would be an asset because Democrats are often perceived as weak on law enfoorcement. This year… who knows? And the Kamala Harris attacks are going to be tough, because it will force the Democrats to talk about her record - and ‘justice’ Democrats aren’t going to like it.