(9:30 pm PDT Thursday:) A problem with the Democrats’ high-low coalition of the fringes is that the fringes are awfully fringy. Stoking black rage for political advantage is a high risk strategy. And it’s not as if Obama and the Clintons didn’t know that.

Update: From the NYT (6:48 AM PDT Friday)

Snipers killed five Dallas police officers and wounded seven others, along with two civilians, during a demonstration on Thursday night against police shootings in Minnesota and Louisiana this week, the authorities said.

By morning, one suspect had been killed by the police, who used a robot-controlled bomb after extensive negotiations during a standoff in a garage in downtown Dallas at the El Centro community college. Three others were in custody.

The Dallas police chief, David O. Brown, said the gunman who was killed had “said he was upset about Black Lives Matter, said he was upset about the recent police shootings.”

Chief Brown said, “The suspect said he was upset at white people; the suspect said he wanted to kill white people.” He was especially upset at white police officers, said Chief Brown.

“This must stop, this divisiveness between police and citizens,” said Chief Brown said, who is black.

The dead suspect is supposedly Michah X. Johnson of Dallas, age 25. He claimed to be a lone wolf.

Another update from the NYT:

“We cornered one suspect and we tried to negotiate for several hours,” Dallas Police Chief David Brown said during a Friday morning news conference, but “negotiations broke down” and turned into “an exchange of gunfire with the suspect.”

The suspect was identified as Micah X. Johnson, 25, a resident of the Dallas area, a U.S. law enforcement official said.

Johnson had no known criminal history or ties to terror groups, the official said, and has relatives in Mesquite, Texas, which is just east of Dallas.The official said federal agents were assisting Dallas authorities in the investigation.

Brown said a hostage negotiator spoke with the gunman at length before he was killed about 2:30 a.m.. The chief said the attacker said he was upset “with white people” and with recent police shootings. The suspect also said that he was not affiliated with any groups and that he acted alone, Brown said.

“The suspect said we will eventually find the IEDs,” Brown said, a reference to explosives. “He wanted to kill officers. And he expressed killing white people, killing white officers, he expressed anger for Black Lives Matter.”

“We saw no other option than to use our bomb robot and place a device on its extension to detonate where the suspect was,” Brown said, adding that, “other options would have exposed our officers to grave danger.”

Brown said reports that the suspect shot himself were incorrect. “The suspect is deceased as a result of detonating the bomb,” he said.