The Democrats are panicking over the Black Lives Matter riots not because you know, they oppose burning stores and dragging people out of their cars and beating them, but because the voters are sending signals that they’re getting fed up with this stuff. How much of a U-Turn are the Democrats making here? Ask Ted.

Portland mayor Ted Wheeler (D.)—who has yet to provide his police department with consistent directives to quell the riots, arson, and looting that have plagued his city for months—told Oregon Public Radio his strategy was to let the violence “burn itself out.”

But that was, you know, last week. Now there are new marching orders for the party.

Mr. Wheeler took some of the blame himself, saying he and other leaders have allowed the city’s reputation for protest to be hijacked by rioters bent on violence, swamping what should have been a thoughtful conversation on racial justice and policing.

“They’re intent on creating mayhem and attacking and harming people, not just property,” the mayor said in an online press conference Wednesday night. “That’s a line that we can’t allow our community to cross. Not anymore. Enough is enough.”

Wait, it wasn’t enough last week, but it’s enough this week? 

Also that line was crossed months ago.

“Pulling people from their vehicles and beating them in the streets is a horrific, violent crime,” he said.

Did Ted just wake up and realize this now? BLM and its Antifa camp followers have been doing this for months. And the media kept blaming the drivers.

Does Ted now have a plan for ending this? Nah. Unleashing the genie is a lot easier than getting it in the box. But now Team Biden will have a defense prepped and the media will go on running unflattering pieces about some of the rioters as if such weak bourgeois tactics that are enough to panic normal people will stop the violence.