San Bernardino and knee-jerk reactions

As far as the rhetoric was concerned, between all the talk of registering Muslims and rejecting refugees, the climate was already warming up to a rather alarming time in American politics. And now, with what’s been identified as a married couple of Pakistani descent on a “Natural Born Killers”-scripted murder spree in San Bernardino, Calif., it’s likely we’re about to enter a rather dangerous time in American politics.

{mosads}The polls, mixed with incendiary talk on the campaign trail, were already fingerpainting an ugly, zigzaggy portrait of an electorate clearly on edge. Republicans will, predictably, blow this up into something much bigger than 9/11 just because it happened under President Obama’s watch. Meanwhile, gun sales continued breaking records this past Black Friday, an indication that our national psyche is in a state of anxious flux — so we grab for firearms like kids grabbing for teddy bears (presidential candidate Obama called it, though, in 2008).

Now throw the most deadly mass shooting since Sandy Hook into it; watch it burn as a wary public fails to keep itself from spiraling into bigoted side effects. A hastily arranged press conference by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, while well-intentioned, may have inadvertently added fuel to the fire of cursing critics who are far into “I told you so” assertions. Best to have just let the family of the shooters release condolence statements than put an advocacy group’s brand on it before details of motive are even released.

Since we don’t have all the facts lined up yet, we can only assume the motivations of the shooters. We shouldn’t, but you know we’re doing that already. Thank media for that. Shoutouts to social media for the extinction of thoughtful deliberation on pretty much anything. Too conveniently, as if prescient, Quinnipiac University gives us polling results on American fear of “homegrown terrorism” less than 24 hours after San Bernardino went down. Nearly 60 percent of voters consider domestic “jihadists” a greater threat than the largely harmless, fleeing Syrian refugees they don’t want resettled here (52 percent are against that plan). The partisan differences on the refugee question are unsurprising, but still stark: 84 percent of Republicans say “no,” while only 23 percent of Democrats agree with that. And when it comes to the question of “homegrown jihadists,” far more Democrats, 65 percent, are worried about that than Republicans at 52 percent.

Interestingly enough, no one has yet asked about armed non-jihadi white guys who rush full metal jacket into crowded movie theaters, black churches and Planned Parenthood clinics. How do voters feel about them — and the fact that they always, remarkably, seem to survive police response?

Back on point, though, it’s a bad look to have something like this happen during an election cycle like this particular one. Before San Bernardino, YouGov had already found concern over terrorism “matching” that of concern over the economy: an equal amount, 16 percent in the wake of the Paris attacks, finding terrorism a bigger threat than any hiccups in the economy (just as an impending raise in interest rates could pose trouble for shaky indicators). A month before, 70 percent in a CNN/ORC poll viewed the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) as a major threat along with the 73 percent in a Quinnipiac poll who were bracing for another major terrorist attack on American soil. A week after San Bernardino, where are those numbers headed next?

This at a time of packed Republican primaries dominating media spotlight and political discourse while Democrats stupidly limit their candidates’ exposure out of an abundance of Clintonian caution. A time of bigger-than-Oz bigots like Donald Trump and politically inexperienced retired neurosurgeons who double down on strange things about God being their campaign manager. Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas), by comparison, now appears unbelievably … rational. We hope some reason will prevail amid the coming backlash, but we don’t hold our collective breath for that. The shooters were Muslim and armed. That’s all many will hear and want to hear. And it may be all it takes to game-change this election into fresh, new, unpredictable territory. The match is rolling slowly to the gas puddle. Hopefully, no one lights it.

Ellison is a veteran political strategist and a contributing editor at The Root and a contributor to The Hill. He is Washington correspondent for The Philadelphia Tribune and the Sunday Washington insider for WDAS-FM in Philadelphia. He is also host of “The Ellison Report,” a weekly public-affairs magazine broadcast and podcast on WEAA 88.9 FM in Baltimore. Follow him on Twitter.