Charlottesville was a lesson. If you take your time, people will die. Do it quickly and quietly before an opposition can be mounted.
There's a political angle and (for lack of a better word) a moral angle.
The moral angle is relatively simple to me: these monuments represent a struggle to maintain the right to own other human beings. For that reason alone, idolizing these monuments and statues of their generals is obscene.
The political angle is never black and white, made more complicated by the fact that it's always ethically dubious to prioritize political gains over moral ones. After all, would it be reasonable to argue that it wasn't "the right political time" to give women the right to vote, black people the right to eat at any restaurant they can afford, and gays the right to marry? Nonetheless, the political angle can't be discounted altogether. There are several problems with making the monuments such a high profile issue, politically speaking:
1)The culture war: the monuments becomes a rallying point for conservatives.
2)As a result, conservatives who aren't even racist themselves are pushed into the same corner as White Supremacists due to simple tribalism. Therefore, Democrats are the enemy and not the White Supremacists in their midsts.
3)Trump won partly on his resistance to "political correctness." The monuments and White Supremacist issue may rise well above a simple matter of political correctness for you and me, but to Republicans this is exactly the kind of PC issue that Trump rode to power on.
4)To Republicans, this is not a "substance" issue. A substance issue is national policy that affects their livelihoods directly. This includes healthcare and jobs.
5)As a result of all of this, Republicans become enthusiastic rather than depressed voters in 2018. If you need a reminder of what it means to be a depressed or enthusiastic voter, just look at the difference between Hillary and Donald voters in 2016, and the impact that had on the election. There are many reasons Clinton lost, some legitimate, some entirely illegitimate, but depressed Democratic turnout and energized Republican turnout was absolutely one of them. While I don't believe that Democratic turnout in 2018 and 2020 would be equally depressed, it's simply not smart to hand Republican voters a reason to be energized.
Now, this is not to say that it won't ultimately be the right call to demand these monuments come down. But that's not to say the above points shouldn't be taken into consideration either. After all, right now, Trump's approval has risen nearly a full percentage point since Saturday, and his disapproval is likewise dropping like a rock.
Of course, one could also make the argument that in lieu of 68% of Republicans approving of how he responded to Charlottesville, Democrats might be justified to conclude, "**** it, these people are in the stone age, we're moving on with or without them."
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/17/poll-trump-charlottesville-response-241730