Rest assured, there are signs that Democrats are finally getting the message that voters are sick and tired of crime. Make that a few Democrats.
A brouhaha is brewing on at least three fronts, and the good news is that the White House is on the right side this time.
President Biden stunned many in his own party by backing a Republican-led bill to overturn an idiotic plan in Washington DC to reduce sentences for murders, carjacking and other violent crimes in the nation’s capital.
Biden’s move, which was a flip-flop from a previous position, came despite his support for home government and statehood for DC.
In an effort to square that circle, the White House noted that Mayor Muriel Bowser opposed the move to lighter sentences, but overrode her city council veto.
“He believes in keeping DC’s 700,000 residents safe. And so he takes that action because it comes to him,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre argued on Friday.
Unless you’re a sucker for claims of chance, you know that the shifting political sands had everything to do with Biden’s turnaround.
He’s been coldly nonchalant about rising crime throughout most of his presidency, and his sudden concern came only after usually credible blue state voters turned against the incumbent top Dem over the carnage.
The most prominent cases include Governor Hochul, who was nearly upset by GOP candidate Lee Zeldin, who focused on crime like a laser.
Then came Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who was thrashed in her bid for a second term.
Chicago has been awash in bloodshed throughout Lightfoot’s tenure and has seen 700 or more homicides in the past three years.
The homicide rate is five times higher than New York City, which had 438 homicides last year despite being 6 million more people.
Polls showed that more than 70% of Chicago voters listed crime and public safety as their first or second most important issue, but Lightfoot listened and insisted that she and her police commissioner would not change course.
So voters switched mayors.
Lightfoot, a black lesbian, blamed her loss on racism and gender bias.
When asked by a reporter if she had been treated unfairly, she said, “I am a black woman in America. Naturally.”
Oddly enough, her race, gender and sexual orientation didn’t stop her from winning in a landslide four years ago.
She is only a victim of her own arrogance and incompetence.
While Chicago’s homicides and shootings are down so far this year, overall serious crime is still up by a whopping 52%, including a 143% increase in auto theft, according to the latest police statistics.
Of course, the voters’ verdict is far from complete.
Lightfoot finished third in the unbiased race, receiving just 17% of the vote in a field of nine, with the top two finishers facing off next month.
Its leader, former school superintendent Paul Vallas, received 34% of the vote as he carried out an anti-crime agenda and pledged to employ an additional 2,000 police officers.
Runner-up Brandon Johnson got 20% while promising to raise taxes and cut the police budget.
In addition to being hopelessly lenient on crime, Johnson is also a tool of Chicago’s teachers’ unions, which are among the most radical in the country.
The unions staged an 11-day strike over wages and other issues in the fall of 2019.
Bail rumble in Albany
While the Chicago referendum is a clear referendum on crime and progressivism, the New York Dems continue to fight their own civil war in Albany — with a twist.
David Soares, the county’s district attorney, is battling progressives in the legislature over extremely lenient changes they made to bail and other laws in 2019.
And while race is usually an unspoken subtext in crime debates, this time it takes center stage because Soares and the legislative leaders of both chambers are black.
The battle began when word leaked that Soares, who represents an association of prosecutors, planned to condemn the 2019 amendments and demand that they be reversed.
Because he dared to tell truths that lawmakers did not want to hear, Soares was reportedly not invited the night before he was scheduled to speak.
Although his prepared remarks were eventually read into the record, the sneaky maneuver allowed the criminal coddlers to avoid a public brawl that they would have lost.
This is due to the convincing way in which Soares formulated his argument.
For example, when speaking about the changes to the bail law, he presented facts to show that the claims about the old law’s disproportionate impact on the poor were not true.
“The perception that many people were being held on minor charges on low bail was absolutely false,” Soares was willing to say.
His most explosive remarks focused on race, such as when three years later he contrasted the explained reasoning behind the changes with the actual results.
“These reforms have had their most devastating impact on black and brown communities,” he wrote. “If you look honestly at the data — the increase in crime, the victims of those crimes, and the location of the most violent crimes, the connection is pretty clear.”
Of course, there have been previous attempts by other Dems to free the party from the far-left “defund the police” movement. Mayor Adams made Gotham’s surge in violent crime a focus of his 2021 campaign and has made strides in reducing homicides and shootings, though the city still has a long way to go to restore public confidence .
But Adams and his ilk have been the exceptions, with Biden and other so-called moderates handing over the reins to the lunatics and loudmouths who declare the police the problem and criminals the victims.
Will this time be different? Do you believe in miracles?
Unexpected Bibi allies
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in an interview with Wall Street Journal columnist Walter Russell Mead at a Duke Forum event, made some fascinating statements, including this one: “Christian Zionism preceded Jewish Zionism. It is doubtful that Jewish Zionism would have succeeded without the centuries of Christian Zionism, especially the 19th century Christian Zionists in Britain and the United States.”
‘First’ in scandal
They are number 1!
Joe and Hunter Biden are making history the wrong way.
Pointing to the president’s investigation into his handling of classified documents and Hunter’s investigation into tax and other issues, Fox News explains: “The Bidens made presidential history because they were the first father-son duo to simultaneously — but separately — is under federal investigation.”
