In last week’s news conference, President Biden seemed to wave a green light to Vladimir Putin: Russian military forces may make a “minor incursion” into neighboring Ukraine. Was Biden applying to diplomacy, I wondered, the permissive posture so many other Democratic officials have taken, domestically? Crime’s fine, if small enough.
If so, Biden’s not leading — Democrats around the country are changing direction.
“We are in a crisis,” San Francisco Mayor London Breed announced last month, declaring a state of emergency. “Too many people are dying in this city. Too many people are sprawled all over our streets. And now we have a plan to address it.”
Her approach? Simple: End the “reign of criminals” by taking “the steps to be more aggressive with law enforcement . . . and less tolerant of all the bullsh*t that has destroyed our city.”
The New York Times called it “a sharp break with the liberal conventions that have guided her city for decades.”
“About time,” was California Governor Gavin Newsom’s response.
When Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner responded to questions about rising crime by arguing, “We don’t have a crisis of lawlessness, we don’t have a crisis of crime, we don’t have a crisis of violence,” former Mayor Michael Nutter expressed incredulity.
“How many more Black and brown people, and others,” Nutter wrote in the Philadelphia Inquirer, “would have to be gunned down in our streets daily to meet your definition of a ‘crisis’?”
Still, upon taking office weeks ago, Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg “ordered his prosecutors to stop seeking prison sentences for hordes of criminals and to downgrade felony charges in cases including armed robberies . . .” the New York Post reported.
“The identical platform,” noted a police supervisor, “has not worked out in San Francisco, Chicago, Philadelphia and Baltimore.”
Or anywhere else. Ever.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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