As the political jockeying for position ahead of the 2024 campaign season gets underway, crime is emerging yet again as a problem for Democrats, and it’s an issue that has the potential to hurt not just Joe Biden but also his fellow party members in down-ballot races – even in Democrat-friendly parts of the country.
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot learned this the hard way earlier this week, but she’s not the only one, as The Hill notes. There have been other Democrats in recent years who have also suffered the same political fate in part due to their soft-on-crime stances:
Still, [Lightfoot’s loss] is one more data point demonstrating the political perils for Democrats who don’t persuade voters they are sufficiently tough on crime.Back in 2021, several progressive candidates hoping to become mayor of New York City were vanquished by Eric Adams (D), a former police officer and centrist, in the Democratic primary.The same year, voters in Minneapolis — the city where George Floyd was murdered by a police officer in 2020 — emphatically rejected a ballot measure that would have supplanted the police department with a Department of Public Safety.In June 2022, San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin (D) was recalled by voters unhappy with his lenient approach on crime.And even though Democrats suffered fewer losses than expected in last November’s midterms, they were hit hard in New York state, where Republicans gained four House seats and polls showed crime to be among voters’ top concerns.
The 2021 mayoral race in Buffalo was also an example of a soft-on-crime “Defund the Police” radical (and one endorsed by AOC) getting soundly rejected by voters.
And as the Washington Times reports, the woke D.C. City Council is giving some Democrats on Capitol Hill headaches after the council easily overrode Mayor Muriel Bowser’s veto of a bill viewed by Congressional Republicans as soft on crime:
D.C. politicians are scrambling to shore up support among their Democratic Party allies in Congress ahead of a likely vote next week in the Senate on an overhaul of the city’s criminal code. The measure has been approved by the D.C. Council but is criticized by Republicans as being “soft on crime.”A Republican-authored bill would block the changes to the local criminal code, which would reduce penalties for some violent crimes. Sen. Joe Manchin III, West Virginia Democrat, has said he plans to join Republicans in voting against the District’s changes.The White House could bail out the District with a veto of the Republican disapproval measure, but a last-minute save from a reelection-minded President Biden is no guarantee.Sen. Jon Tester, a Democrat facing voters next year in conservative-leaning Montana, hasn’t said how he will vote. He was noncommittal when asked about the District’s massive code rewrite.
Nearly a month ago, the Republican-controlled House voted to overturn the city council’s attempted overhaul of the D.C. criminal code. 31 Democrats joined them, further proving that Democrats are aware of the prickly nature of the looming soft-on-crime debate and are trying to navigate accordingly.
Update – 5:25 pm: Biden tweeted this afternoon that if Senate Republicans overturn the D.C. Council’s criminal code overhaul then he will sign it:
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —
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