Per Biden-A Harsh Reality For Progressives And Crime

Highlights

A new reality is taking hold of President Biden and progressives; citizens and businesses are demanding safety. It’s a profound change from the presidential election two years ago.

“It shows you the power this issue has become. Look what happened in Chicago. Look what happened in San Francisco. Everywhere you turn around,” Democratic strategist James Carville.

Author

Opinion

From Chicago to cities across the country, a citizen rebellion as to crime and safety has been playing out for years. It’s now reaching a fever pitch.

President Biden said that he would support a bipartisan-Congressional veto of newly approved laws in Washington, D.C. lowering the penalties for a wide array of crimes while homicides and violence increase there and nationally. It has been more than three decades since Congress outright nullified a D.C. law.

Many Democrats are aghast and feel blindsided by Biden’s actions based on their support of statehood for D.C., something that the President supports.

So why would Biden anger Congressional Democrats and the 700,000 voters of Washington, D.C.?

Lorie Lightfoot, mayor of Chicago, lost her election by a landslide to a conservative candidate promising law and order.

Associated Press(direct, rearranges quotes)

President Joe Biden said Thursday he is willing to sign a Republican-sponsored resolution blocking new District of Columbia laws that would overhaul how the nation’s capital prosecutes and punishes crime.

In doing so, the president would be allowing Congress to nullify the city’s laws for the first time in more than three decades. Biden’s willingness to do so, despite earlier opposition from his White House, is linked to growing concern over rising crime both in the nation’s capital and across the U.S. and comes amid relentless criticism from Republicans.

The GOP effort is part of a growing political backlash against Democratic-led criminal justice changes that picked up pace after the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot lost her bid this week for reelection as some of her Democratic challengers argued that the nation’s third-largest city needed tough-on-crime policies. Some Republicans blame rising crime on reforms, but the reality is more complicated.

NBC News Headline-Biden Bucks Liberals And Tells Democrats To Get Tough On Crime (direct, rearranged quotes)

Biden tells liberals to get tough on crime. It shows how powerful the issue has become, says James Carville, who helped Bill Clinton counter soft-on-crime attacks during the 1990s crime wave.

President Joe Biden’s decision Thursday on a local crime law sends a national message to fellow Democrats about how he believes they should address Republican criticism of the nation’s rising crime rates.

Democrats have focused predominantly on police reform since the George Floyd protests reignited a national debate over race and law enforcement three years ago. But rising violent crime rates and growing perceptions of unease in major cities have prompted a chorus of party strategists and officials to call for a tougher approach to counter Republican attacks.

Biden — who has a history of pushing for stauncher crime laws — has tried to straddle the Democratic divide but was forced this week to choose sides when he said he wouldn’t allow the Washington, D.C., city government to enact laws that would lower some criminal penalties.

Per Carville, “It shows you the power this issue has become. Look what happened in Chicago. Look what happened in San Francisco. Everywhere you turn around,” Carville said, referring to the ouster of Lightfoot and former San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin in a recall election last year.

The Marshall Project (rearranged, direct quotes)

Nowhere is that better on display than in Chicago, where incumbent Mayor Lori Lightfoot failed to qualify for a runoff election in the city’s Democratic primary on Tuesday, a battle that was framed almost exclusively on the question of crime. In a poll last month, 44% of Chicago voters said crime and public safety were the most important issues in their vote for mayor, followed by criminal justice reform at 13%. Nearly two-thirds of those polled said they personally felt unsafe in the city.

Paul Vallas, who won the plurality of primary voters with 34%, ran a “tough-on-crime” campaign, promising increased police patrols and the introduction of a “robust public nuisance ordinance,” reminiscent of the “broken windows” policing strategies of the past. The former head of Chicago Public Schools, Vallas has the support of the city’s powerful police union. His rise is somewhat reminiscent of New York Mayor Eric Adams in 2021, but the primary results are not a simple story of the criminal justice pendulum swinging to the right.

The Chicago runoff will not be the only election this spring to revolve largely around issues of crime and public safety. In Denver, 12 of the 17 mayoral candidates have used the word “safe” in their campaign slogans or named safety as a key issue in their platforms, according to The Denver Post.

That’s also the case in Seattle, where in a recent “state of the city” speech, Mayor Bruce Harrell named crime as a top priority. Harrell touted an aggressive push to hire more officers, alongside plans for a new public safety department geared toward a non-police response to emergencies. In Akron, Ohio, where a mayoral primary is coming in May, nearly 90% of likely voters responding to a recent poll said they prioritize issues of “safety and crime.”

Conclusions

It was never my intention to write opinion pieces or to engage in partisanship. Then came the “defund the police” movement and a variety of progressive endeavors (i.e., candidate Biden’s pledge to cut the prison population in half) that would harm crime control efforts for decades while violence was increasing, especially in urban areas.

I watched several national news reports and talk shows discussing the President’s support of a veto of the new D.C. law and all cited the country’s weariness of violence and crime. Progressives downplayed the concerns of record fear of crime.

Before the last presidential election, Biden was normally harsh on crime saying that the issue would serve Democrats well. With losses during the midterm elections, Republican control of the House of Representatives, a slim margin in the Senate, the exodus of tens of thousands of police officers, and the landslide rejection of Chicago’s Lorie Lightfoot, Biden now understands that if he wants another term, he has to move to the right on crime.

He’s willing to dismiss the 700,000 votes of the D.C. electorate and incur the wrath of Congressional Democrats.

Progressives, welcome to your new reality.

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