'If progressives are smart enough to listen to him, both Biden and they could end up winning this fight.' More from danschnur in our Perspectives section:
President Joe Biden and former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who recently lost reelection amid continued crime issues in the city. Joe Biden picked a fight with the Democratic Party last week. If his party is smart enough to listen to him, both he and they could end up winning that fight.
For the formative decades of Biden’s political career, candidates of either party who could credibility present themselves as “tough on crime” almost always began their campaigns with a significant advantage. Republican politicians used criminal justice and public safety issues as a cudgel to beat up their opponents, and most savvy Democrats – like a young Biden – found ways to burnish their law enforcement before facing a general election audience.
Around the turn of the century, the issue began to lose its salience with large numbers of voters. This was primarily because the crime rate had declined precipitously, and while there was heated debate about whether that drop was because of more stringent sentencing laws or broader demographic trends, the end result is that many Americans began to feel much safer and turned their attention to other matters.
Ironically, the backlash against this less restrictive approach became more evident in the immediate aftermath of the murder of George Floyd in the summer of 2020. After the original outrage against the police officers responsible for Floyd’s death, the “defund the police” movement triggered a concern among large portions of the electorate that the pendulum had swung too far in the other direction.
Biden himself was emphatic throughout the 2020 election that he opposed defunding, which protected him against Donald Trump’s attacks on the issue. Since then, the criminal justice debate has only gotten louder. Democratic mayoral candidates in New York and Los Angeles won their elections after emphasizing strong criminal justice agendas.
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