Democrats afraid to talk about crime
DEMOCRATS AFRAID TO TALK ABOUT CRIME. It appears to be dawning on some Democrats in Washington that it is not a good idea politically to be soft on crime during a crime wave -- especially when their own positions helped spark the crime wave. Just look at a new headline in the Washington Post: "Democrats pushed hard last year to rein in the police. A rise in homicides is prompting a shift." The short version is that Democrats are beginning to understand that the ugly anti-police actions and rhetoric some of them engaged in after the death of George Floyd last year helped cause an increase in violent crime, an increase in suffering, an increase in fear -- and now, political blowback.
But here's the kicker: Some of those very same Democrats who get the message are afraid to talk about it in public.
The Post story relates some of the basics of the crime story. It tells how, for example, the Democratic city council of Minneapolis voted to defund the police and now some city officials are working to undo the damage. It discusses how the leader of the Democratic mayoral primary in New York City, Eric Adams, ran as a law-and-order candidate. The article also talks about the Democrats who deny they ever endorsed defunding the police, even though some of them, like President Joe Biden, approved of redirecting some funds away from police departments. The big picture is that, with crime rising dramatically in big Democratic-controlled cities, some Democratic politicians are changing their tunes.
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But when attention turns to the national level, and specifically to House Republican attacks on Democratic incumbents for being soft on crime, some Democrats were too fearful to discuss the matter in public.
"Many Democrats are now feeling a growing urgency to rebut the Republican attacks, especially in the battleground states and districts," the Post reports. "In the House, the path to power runs through suburban areas, where Democrats dominated during Donald Trump's presidency. Voters in those districts are getting flooded with grisly news reports of violent crime in adjacent cities."
That would be an opportunity for those Democrats to take a bold and public stand in favor of law enforcement, right? Wrong. "Many of the centrist Democrats representing these districts were reluctant to discuss the issue this week," the Post continued, "underscoring that it has not been favorable terrain for the party in recent years. One centrist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic, said fellow Democrats must not shy away from talking about rising crime and challenges facing police."
Democrats must not be afraid to speak out, says one Democrat -- anonymously! The Democrat who urged colleagues to speak publicly was afraid to do so himself or herself. That says more about the current state of the party on the crime issue than anything else in the article.
One reason those "centrist" Democrats might be afraid to speak out is the danger of running afoul of progressive orthodoxy enforcers. One of those enforcers, of course, is Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who recently denounced "hysteria" about crime. "We are seeing these headlines about percentage increases," Ocasio-Cortez said recently in an online conversation with a House Democratic colleague, Jamaal Bowman. "Now, I want to say that any amount of harm is unacceptable and too much, but I also want to make sure that this hysteria, you know, that this doesn't drive a hysteria and that we look at these numbers in context so that we can make responsible decisions about what to allocate in that context."
Perhaps at this very moment, Ocasio-Cortez is trying to find the proper "context" in which to place 40-plus percentage point increases in murders in some cities and a 25 percent increase in murders nationwide -- "effectively eras[ing] decades of progress in combating violent crime,” as the liberal website Vox admitted. What's the "context" for that?
When it comes to crime, many Democrats are deeply afraid. They're afraid of the voters who will hold them accountable for those efforts to "rein in" the police. And they're afraid of their own colleagues who will attack them if they stand up for law and order. So they remain silent. We'll see how that works in the next election.
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