Thermidor Arrives

Democrats scamper off the sinking "criminals are cool" ship

Paul told us about a week ago that Pres. Biden had reversed field and advised Democratic senators that, if a resolution nixing the District of Columbia’s massively pro-criminal overhaul of its criminal code passed the Senate, he would sign it.

Yesterday, the news arrived. It was not ambiguous. As the Washington Examiner puts it:

The Senate overwhelmingly voted to overturn a newly passed ordinance overhauling Washington's century-old criminal code, marking the first time in 30 years that Congress has repealed a local law passed by the D.C. Council.

The Senate voted 81-14 on Wednesday, with one senator voting "present," to strike down the legislation, which would have weakened penalties for crimes including carjackings and homicide.

The Senate has only 49 Republicans. The fact that the blocking resolution got 81 votes means that 32 Democrats — a fat majority of their caucus — voted for it.

It seems the Democrats have figured out that “Defund the Police” and similar Woke slogans didn’t play so well. If they had learned this (or pretended to learn it) six months ago, they might well have retained the House, given how skimpy the Republicans’ House gains were and how close the battle for a majority turned out to be. And if Nancy Pelosi were still in charge in the House, the blocking resolution would never have made it to the House floor or, therefore, to the Senate. And DC residents who can afford it (those being disproportionately white) — thus being saddled with a system even more shockingly soft on crime than the one they have now — would have even more reason to vamoose.

As Paul observed, “Joe Biden doesn’t know much, but he’s usually known which way the wind is blowing. When it comes to crime, the wind is blowing in the face of those whose policies favor criminals.”

As the Washington Post noted a day before the Senate vote:

“There’s deep anxiety about public safety,” said David Axelrod, a former top adviser to former president Barack Obama and a longtime Chicagoan. “And Democrats or anyone running for public office needs to be able to speak to that.”

As ever with the Post and other Democratic partisans, the concern is not with crime itself and the huge amount of loss and injury it creates (disproportionately to those without the means to avoid it, largely black people), but simply about how to spin the message to handle public “anxiety.”

Note to WaPo: Anxiety is not the main problem. It’s a by-product of the main problem, that being getting a revolver stuck in your ear to relieve you of your wallet, most often by some thug who’s been recycled through the system a dozen times to no effect; or having your middle school daughter raped in the school bathroom by a boy who says he’s a girl and who the school authorities are too cowardly and too intimidated by Wokeism to have expelled the first time he tried it.

Still, it is the Washington Post, so I can’t fully blame it for playing up the political angle, which it does in a revealing way:

Vulnerable Dems concerned

Several Democratic senators facing competitive races have said they’ll vote with Republicans on the D.C. bill, including Sens. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), Robert P. Casey Jr. (D-Pa.) and Jon Tester (D-Mont.). Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), the No. 2 Senate Democrat, haven’t said how they plan to vote.

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), who’s running for reelection next year, said he would vote to strike down the law because [DC Mayor Muriel] Bowser was opposed to the revised code while the D.C. Council supported it — even though she urged Congress not to interfere in the District’s affairs.

With the election of Gov. Glenn Youngkin in Virginia, and with Republicans reclaiming a majority in the state House of Delegates, apparently Sen. Kaine worries that Virginia has shifted back to being a purple state, and that he might have a tough race on his hands. I suspect he’s right.

The Post article continues:

Voters have given Biden low marks on his handling of crime since his first year in office.

• Just 40 percent of Americans approved of Biden’s handling of crime and 58 percent disapproved, according to an ABC News-Ipsos poll in January. Those numbers are almost unchanged from the first time ABC asked the question in July 2021.

• Asked which party they trust more to handle crime, 54 percent of registered voters chose Republicans, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll conducted right before last year’s midterms. Just 34 percent chose Democrats.

As I’ve said before, crime is a key issue for Republicans because it hits home. The WaPo acknowledges this gently by again quoting Axelord: “If people don’t feel like things are getting better, you can’t jawbone them into thinking that they are better.” Let me translate that for you in more straightforward language: When there’s been a fatal shooting in the shopping center you use, and your next door neighbor’s car got broken into and rifled last night, and a gun got pulled in a cafeteria fight at your son’s high school, you’re on notice that crime has arrived in your life, and arrived in a way the MSM can’t successfully lie to you about.