California Sends Democrats and the Nation a Message on Crime The recall of a progressive prosecutor in San Francisco and the strong showing by a former Republican in the mayor’s race in Los Angeles showed the shifting winds on criminal justice. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/08/us/politics/california-voters-democrats-crime.html excerpt: LOS ANGELES — Voters in California delivered a stark warning to the Democratic Party on Tuesday about the potency of law and order as a political message in 2022, as a Republican-turned-Democrat campaigning as a crime-fighter vaulted into a runoff in the mayoral primary in Los Angeles and a progressive prosecutor in San Francisco was recalled in a landslide. The two results made vivid the depths of voter frustration over rising crime and rampant homelessness in even the most progressive corners of the country — and are the latest signs of a restless Democratic electorate that was promised a return to normalcy under President Biden and yet remains unsatisfied with the nation’s state of affairs. “People are not in a good mood, and they have reason not to be in a good mood,” said Garry South, a Los Angeles-based Democratic strategist. “It’s not just the crime issue. It’s the homelessness. It’s the high price of gasoline.” The West Coast contests were being monitored closely by strategists and leaders in both parties around the country, as Democrats seek to hold together a fractious and diverse political coalition that can be divided both by race and ideology over criminal justice. more at the link
Time for the Democrats’ Chesa Boudin Moment! If Not Now, When? If Not Him, Who? https://theliberalpatriot.substack.com/p/time-for-the-democrats-chesa-boudin?s=r excerpt: Since 2020, the danger signs have increased significantly, of which the Boudin recall is the latest example. According to Pew, Biden last year lost support twice as fast among Asian voters as among whites. And in the November Virginia gubernatorial election, results from the AP-NORC VoteCast survey (more reliable than the highly flawed exit polls) indicated that Virginia’s heavily Asian “other race” category, which gave Biden a strong 19 point advantage in 2020, slipped to a mere 6 point advantage for Democrat Terry McAuliffe in 2021. Republican Glenn Youngkin carried 46 percent of these voters in his upset victory. The reasons for this slippage track perfectly with the results in San Francisco. One problem has been that Asians are worried about public safety and leery of a Democratic party that has become associated with “defund the police” and a soft approach to containing crime. Another has been that Asians, like Hispanics, are a constituency that does not harbor particularly radical views on the nature of American society and how it must be remade to cleanse it of intrinsic racism and white supremacy, a viewpoint increasingly identified with Democrats. They are far more interested in how they and their families can get ahead in actually-existing American society. Finally, there is perhaps the key issue for many Asian voters: education. It is difficult to overestimate how important education is to Asian voters, who see it as the key tool for upward mobility—a tool that even the poorest Asian parents can take advantage of. But Democrats have become increasingly associated with an approach to schooling that seems anti-meritocratic, oriented away from standardized tests, gifted and talented programs and test-in elite schools—all areas where Asian children have excelled. This of course was a huge issue in San Francisco, where the School Board pushed this approach up to and including replacing the rigorous entrance test for the famed Lowell School with a lottery. That move, combined with the School Board’s bizarre obsession with an “anti-racist” school renaming project even as schools remained closed and students suffered, angered Asian parents and others so much that they took the lead in successfully recalling three of the ringleaders of this approach, a clear precursor to the current recall. So Democrats are hemorrhaging support among Asian voters, alienating other nonwhite voters with their lax approach to public safety and losing many formerly loyal white liberals and moderates who are “mad as hell and not going to take it anymore”. What to do? The answer seems clear to me. It’s time for Democrats to adopt former UK prime minister Tony Blair’s felicitous slogan: “Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime”. Conservative outlets like Fox News may exaggerate but voters really do want law and order—done fairly and humanely, but law and order just the same. Democrats still seem reluctant to highlight their commitment to cracking down on crime and criminals because that is something that, well, Fox News would say. more at the link
I am not sure why this is so difficult for democrats. Time and time again it has been shown that a majority of Americans are concerned with physical safety. The democrats supporting criminal reform and the releasing of a lot of prisoners isn't going to turn out well for democrats either. The homeless, violent crimes, petty crimes and open drug abuse are not liked by a majority of voting democrats, yet the party doesn't take any reasonably positions on it.
These idiots never needed to test their bullshit with real data, so all we have is a race to the bottom with expectations. It's like they gave up on real accountability. If we jump headfirst and rid ourselves of "standards", then it's damn lazy and foolish not to come up with an alternate measure of improving the(presumably agreed upon) intended goal. Boudin supporters had the gall of claiming crime decreased, well yeah do jack **** about prosecuting, who wants to take time to write anything down? Problem solved! More inequality, less reported crime. Even a caveman could do it!
The ruling leadership sucks and are out of touch. They probably don't want to rattle black constituents with their passive bias despite black voters rejecting the whole defund the police nonsense. Reform yes, strip out no. They also claim to be the workers party but don't want to be caught dead in a flyover state or working a blue collar job. But Amazon or Walmart grocer pays well. Take the L and wear a ****ing diaper to optimize not taking breaks because the Workers Party still believe...in boosting the bottom line for the companies in their inside trades. Unions? Gross! Never liked the Sopranos.
Made-for-TV Jan. 6 hearings won’t rescue Democrats https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/3516707-made-for-tv-jan-6-hearings-wont-rescue-democrats/
Is this really about "democrats" or just San Fran being ultra liberal and getting way over their skis trying to be more progressive than the next guy? Democrats elected a police chief in NY yet that rarely gets any mention when law and order stuff gets talked about. I guess my real question is why democrats consistently get stigmatized with the worst things about them yet republicans do not, everybody points out SF and Chicago yet the states with the highest crime rates are mostly republican states. https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/crime-rate-by-state. Does any party take reasonable positions on any of the things you mentioned?
It isn't the majority of democratic voters, it is the party leadership in many cases. Physical safety (or perceived safety) is very important to the vast majority of voters, and that included democrats. Agreed, I don't have an issue with most democratic voters, it is the part leadership which sets the agenda. Republicans get stigmatized for different things. People for the most part do not live or want to live in states with terrible crime. They would rather live in places like LA, NYC, SF, HOU.... and those cities get more attention and tend to be places people are interested in. I agree with a lot of the policies in these areas, but the party leadership can go too far. Define reasonable? What I personally think happens is that the democratic leadership fails to understand that the "base" need of a lot of people is to be safe, even before empathy or understanding. So even if people don't want to admit it, they don't want to see homeless people or drug addicts. They don't want people on the streets that have been in prison for decades, even if the risk is low.
That still does not answer the question of why crime rates are higher in Republican states than Democratic states yet Republicans are supposed to be the Law and Order party. All the while SF is a cross all Democrats have to bear.
San Francisco isn't a cross all democrats have to bear other than the fact that areas like San Francisco, Los Angeles, NYC etc. are high exposure areas that get a lot of attention and the leadership in these areas in turn get a lot of exposure. Crime rates in most (not all) are higher because a lot of those states are poor. The Republicans are viewed as the Law & Order party because they campaign on it (other than Clinton no democrat at a high level really has that I can think of) and because Republicans have historically favored longer sentences and more draconian measures, which for a lot of people (at a base level) is appealing when things go wrong or people get scared. It is the same reason after 9-11 a lot of people lost their mind, they were afraid of violence and not being safe.
I disagree that all democrats don't have to bear that cross it's at the top of the Republican playsheet and it's all Fox talks about.
Crime is not a statewide phenomenon, it is localized to cities or even neighborhoods. Look at the cities with the highest crime rate, they are not exactly Republican strongholds: Top 15 Cities with Highest Crime Rate in the US [Report 2022] (usabynumbers.com) St. Louis, Detroit, Baltimore, Memphis, etc. Democrat after Democrat. I think the first city on the list with a mayor that isn't a Democrat is Stockton, CA, and that is only because the last mayor, Michael Tubbs, was never around and more concerned about his work in Washington than his work in the city, always trying to push his UBI strategy. The majority of the city government is still Dems though.
Let's look at the two parties and what motivates their passion and anger at the other party. Conservatives are upset by certain issues: pronouns, inflation, and private entities trying to prevent the spreading of false information. Also trying to combat further distrust in our secure electoral system. Thus we see the disconnect and different priorities of each party. Progressives are upset by certain issues : A leader trying to cast out the results of a free and fair election discounting the will of the people and execution of the election process. Also the further
It is what the Democrat left religion of Wokesterism demands. They will be banished as heritics if they do not support these insane policies. Not by the voters, mind you. But by the Democrat left cultural brownshirts in the corporate and social media, academia, Hollywood, the deep state, top Democrat party leaders, activists, and increasingly by corporations acting under coercion from these groups.
Because in Republican states, criminals are actively prosecuted, while in Democrat run states they are increasingly not. That is where the numbers come from. And it is also a top reason why people are steadily moving out of the Democrat controlled states to move to the Republican controlled states.
It is about this Wokesterism/"Political correctness"/identity politics (race and sex) agenda. The Democrats will have to evolve out of this phase and leave all of that behind if they hope to escape from this remarkably dysfunctional and counterproductive vortex.
So why are the highest murder rates in Republican led states? https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/crime-rate-by-state
