I agree with pretty much everything in the article, but would add that the media, local and national, shape the public's perception of crime just as much as aggressive policing. I live near Chicago, yet another city governed by a Black mayor (Brandon Johnson) where crime is declining. But you wouldn't know that from local news broadcasts, which usually lead with live coverage of at least three violent incidents because the story "there were ten fewer murders in the city than on this date a year ago" doesn't generate many exciting visuals. So suburban and rural voters across America believe that nearby big cities are war zones and will quietly (or not-so-quietly) approve when Trump imposes martial law on every municipality with a population over 500,000.
We have an enormous amount of people working full time that struggle to maintain financial equilibrium. One emergency like a health problem and they are under water with little in the way of resources to regain their footing. That is getting worse.
We talk about the identity crisis with young men, but don’t address the biggest root cause. These guys will never be able to buy a house, have a decent car or get the girl of their dreams.
Then we clutch our pearls about the complexity of solving problems with young men.
The federal minimum wage is $7.25. And at the other end of the scale we have individual billionaires with hundreds of billions of dollars!
Ya think these young men don’t seethe with resentment about that?
Do you believe these people feel like they have a stake in America? The disenfranchisement of young men in the USA is a tinder box. If we want to lower the crime rate, start there.
Trump’s take over of Los Angelas and Washington D.C. is a dictatorial, authoritarian move that has nothing to do with crime. The more crime is discussed, the more the public accepts that deploying our own military against our own citizens on American soil is normal. Our country is being turned into a police state while the press and elected leaders dither over whether crime is a problem.
Trump's policies is cutting community policing strategies in my area. Getting to know your neighbors. After school programs for kids. Education. Food stamps. Food banks. He's cutting all the programs young people need to stay off the streets.
Not to mention the road Republicans have taken ALREADY led to opening concentration camps and masked goons assaulting people on the streets and draining our treasury to do this. Draining our fucking treasury not for healthcare or education or science or housing, but to pay masked goons to terrify us.
thank you, Paul, for calling out what's working my last nerve: that almost all coverage simply accepts GOP's insistence that dangerous projects like occupying Democratic cities is about stopping crime when it's transparently creating a police state under the false flag of addressing rampant crime. you're the first writer I've seen point out that the entire debate was instantly seized by the "but they do have a point" crowd and that almost nobody starts by calling out the truth, which is that it ain't about crime any more than DOGE was about "waste fraud abuse."
I don't understand why it's so difficult to call things by their names. and until we can do that consistently and clearly, we're failing to address reality. and that never works out very well. but it's great for the bringers of chaos and destruction. it makes their work so much easier to have help in their project from its victims.
an old saying from a number of Asian cultures: "They are the trees rooting for the wooden axe handle, because they think he's one of them" seems to apply. as long as we accept the obviously fraudulent premises of the current authoritarian administration, we're destroying our own efforts to resist them. the seeming prudence of admitting they have a point (when all they have is a fake premise) is us helping them destroy us.
how do we fight this? this "moderate bias" has us digging our own grave.
Paul Waldman may have the better argument on the best way to reduce crime but I’m not at all sure he’s got the politics right. If your political opponent picks a fight with you on a particular issue that ought to be a warning. It’s best not to fight on your enemy’s chosen turf.
I don’t live in America* but I’m pretty sure the accusation Democrats wanted to ‘defund the police’ did real damage amongst low information voters. It might be untrue but the more activist branch of the Democrats certainly helped it ring true. I’m pretty sure if you did a count you'd find they’ve made a lot more comments negative about police than they do about criminals. When they do it’s all too often “(Criticism of criminals) BUT (criticism of police or Republicans)”. You need a tin ear not to hear that the criticism of criminals is preliminary and secondary.
I’d say it’s unarguable that the median voter is better disposed towards police than criminals and in fact has a distinct animus towards the latter. Appearing that your preferences are the other way round is a serious political liability.
*Here in Australia in two recent state elections conservatives have won thumping big majorities in recent elections fighting on (pretty dumb) ‘tough on crime’ policies.
It would have been preferable to use the campaign hashtag: Reform the Police. Words matter, and "Defund" was the wrong word and gave Republicans an opening that they were all too willing to enlarge into a black hole that corporate media eagerly espoused.
Brandon Scott was recently a guest on Chris Hayes’ “Why Is This Happening” podcast describing the Baltimore strategy. It’s a great model for how Democrats can talk about crime reduction.
It’s sad. The wealthiest country in the world just increased taxes on and stripped benefits from the poor—to feed the wealthy. You just watched Congress do this. It should be obvious that the gerrymander-elected government does not serve its people. There is now no solution to anything until we tear this house down. We can rebuild it with rooms, food, and living wages for everyone. To fight, for you, 108 protest signs for your protests. This is critical for Occupied D.C. Many signs are revised to sing. 🎶. I recommend using a local printer, but national print companies offer great pricing, shipping included. There is time to get the lot printed for your protest group, assuming you have a gathering of 300 to 1,000. This would help fill the hands of the signless.
The biggest issue is this is symptomatic of the real issue with democrats: fear of standing up for what they believe and aggressively supporting those beliefs.
Dems have the more popular policies. If we could simply unite on those policies and construct a consistent, simply message in support of those policies we would win.
But as this article well articulates, too often Dems think they have to triangulate and adopt some soft ass middle ground. As the old saying in Texas notes...the only thing in the middle of the road is dead armadillos.
Democrats also need to stop allowing the Republicans to define the issues and to choose the ground on which the fight occurs. (And don't let the billionaire corporate media do it either.) Right now, I want Democrats to point out that the states (all Republican controlled) that are sending National Guard troops to Washington D.C. have cities with much higher crime rates than DC, which has reduced its crime rate.
There's also that little thing about Trump pardoning 1,500 criminals who tried to overthrow an election, including many who attacked cops.
The hypocrisy is galling, but on one ever went broke betting the Democrats will find a way to be on the defensive anyway.
Waldman i correct of course, the notion the DC occupation is remotely about crime is ridiculous...so many other cities with higher crime rates...patrolling the Washington Monument instead of neighborhoods with actual crime...all of it is over the top absurd.
Don't forget allowing a convicted pedophile (Andrew Tate) to enter our country; a textbook example of "rapists and criminals coming over our border" that was possible only bc Trump admin enabled it.
Yeah the moderate Independent and Republication voters and full on MAGA now don’t even believe reporting on crime statistics. My dad pointed to a shooting at a club in Brooklyn this weekend with a tsk-tsk and when I told him you know crime had actually been going down he said he didn’t really believe “that”… so can we PLEASE stop chasing these voters that are brainwashed beyond repair. My dad is a moderate mostly but MAGA have pulled the middle so fair fascist the middle is still disgusting and going to alienate the young progressives and apathetic.
In the book, "Freakonomics", authors Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt argue the single greatest reason that crime in NYC was reduced by the late 1990s was New York's legalization of abortion in the early 1970s. And, if anyone hasn't read the book by the two economists, it is a great read.
Yeah, that’s how Democrats give up territory. They cede that Republicans are at least partially correct. It’s why Bill Clinton did Welfare Reform and signed Don’t ask don’t tell. Democrats have been ceding the political narrative for decades now so they are quite good at it.
I agree with pretty much everything in the article, but would add that the media, local and national, shape the public's perception of crime just as much as aggressive policing. I live near Chicago, yet another city governed by a Black mayor (Brandon Johnson) where crime is declining. But you wouldn't know that from local news broadcasts, which usually lead with live coverage of at least three violent incidents because the story "there were ten fewer murders in the city than on this date a year ago" doesn't generate many exciting visuals. So suburban and rural voters across America believe that nearby big cities are war zones and will quietly (or not-so-quietly) approve when Trump imposes martial law on every municipality with a population over 500,000.
Economic inequality is the elephant in the room.
We have an enormous amount of people working full time that struggle to maintain financial equilibrium. One emergency like a health problem and they are under water with little in the way of resources to regain their footing. That is getting worse.
We talk about the identity crisis with young men, but don’t address the biggest root cause. These guys will never be able to buy a house, have a decent car or get the girl of their dreams.
Then we clutch our pearls about the complexity of solving problems with young men.
The federal minimum wage is $7.25. And at the other end of the scale we have individual billionaires with hundreds of billions of dollars!
Ya think these young men don’t seethe with resentment about that?
Do you believe these people feel like they have a stake in America? The disenfranchisement of young men in the USA is a tinder box. If we want to lower the crime rate, start there.
The resentment is real and growing.
Centrist Democrats enable this.
Trump’s take over of Los Angelas and Washington D.C. is a dictatorial, authoritarian move that has nothing to do with crime. The more crime is discussed, the more the public accepts that deploying our own military against our own citizens on American soil is normal. Our country is being turned into a police state while the press and elected leaders dither over whether crime is a problem.
Trump's policies is cutting community policing strategies in my area. Getting to know your neighbors. After school programs for kids. Education. Food stamps. Food banks. He's cutting all the programs young people need to stay off the streets.
Not to mention the road Republicans have taken ALREADY led to opening concentration camps and masked goons assaulting people on the streets and draining our treasury to do this. Draining our fucking treasury not for healthcare or education or science or housing, but to pay masked goons to terrify us.
Not to mention all the money being spent to create detention centers that could have been used for housing the homeless.
And the for profit prison industrial complex that supported Trump and is reaping rewards https://www.teenvogue.com/story/private-prisons-trump-what-to-know
thank you, Paul, for calling out what's working my last nerve: that almost all coverage simply accepts GOP's insistence that dangerous projects like occupying Democratic cities is about stopping crime when it's transparently creating a police state under the false flag of addressing rampant crime. you're the first writer I've seen point out that the entire debate was instantly seized by the "but they do have a point" crowd and that almost nobody starts by calling out the truth, which is that it ain't about crime any more than DOGE was about "waste fraud abuse."
I don't understand why it's so difficult to call things by their names. and until we can do that consistently and clearly, we're failing to address reality. and that never works out very well. but it's great for the bringers of chaos and destruction. it makes their work so much easier to have help in their project from its victims.
an old saying from a number of Asian cultures: "They are the trees rooting for the wooden axe handle, because they think he's one of them" seems to apply. as long as we accept the obviously fraudulent premises of the current authoritarian administration, we're destroying our own efforts to resist them. the seeming prudence of admitting they have a point (when all they have is a fake premise) is us helping them destroy us.
how do we fight this? this "moderate bias" has us digging our own grave.
Paul Waldman may have the better argument on the best way to reduce crime but I’m not at all sure he’s got the politics right. If your political opponent picks a fight with you on a particular issue that ought to be a warning. It’s best not to fight on your enemy’s chosen turf.
I don’t live in America* but I’m pretty sure the accusation Democrats wanted to ‘defund the police’ did real damage amongst low information voters. It might be untrue but the more activist branch of the Democrats certainly helped it ring true. I’m pretty sure if you did a count you'd find they’ve made a lot more comments negative about police than they do about criminals. When they do it’s all too often “(Criticism of criminals) BUT (criticism of police or Republicans)”. You need a tin ear not to hear that the criticism of criminals is preliminary and secondary.
I’d say it’s unarguable that the median voter is better disposed towards police than criminals and in fact has a distinct animus towards the latter. Appearing that your preferences are the other way round is a serious political liability.
*Here in Australia in two recent state elections conservatives have won thumping big majorities in recent elections fighting on (pretty dumb) ‘tough on crime’ policies.
It would have been preferable to use the campaign hashtag: Reform the Police. Words matter, and "Defund" was the wrong word and gave Republicans an opening that they were all too willing to enlarge into a black hole that corporate media eagerly espoused.
The only accurate sentence in this post:
"I don’t live in America*"
If you can cite reputable opinion polling that swing votes are more anti-police than anti criminal than I'll happily retract.
Excellent piece.
Brandon Scott was recently a guest on Chris Hayes’ “Why Is This Happening” podcast describing the Baltimore strategy. It’s a great model for how Democrats can talk about crime reduction.
It’s sad. The wealthiest country in the world just increased taxes on and stripped benefits from the poor—to feed the wealthy. You just watched Congress do this. It should be obvious that the gerrymander-elected government does not serve its people. There is now no solution to anything until we tear this house down. We can rebuild it with rooms, food, and living wages for everyone. To fight, for you, 108 protest signs for your protests. This is critical for Occupied D.C. Many signs are revised to sing. 🎶. I recommend using a local printer, but national print companies offer great pricing, shipping included. There is time to get the lot printed for your protest group, assuming you have a gathering of 300 to 1,000. This would help fill the hands of the signless.
https://hotbuttons.substack.com/p/protest-sign-sign-everywhere-a-sign
MAGA policy platform: Comfort the comfortable; afflict the afflicted.
100% correct.
The biggest issue is this is symptomatic of the real issue with democrats: fear of standing up for what they believe and aggressively supporting those beliefs.
Dems have the more popular policies. If we could simply unite on those policies and construct a consistent, simply message in support of those policies we would win.
But as this article well articulates, too often Dems think they have to triangulate and adopt some soft ass middle ground. As the old saying in Texas notes...the only thing in the middle of the road is dead armadillos.
Democrats also need to stop allowing the Republicans to define the issues and to choose the ground on which the fight occurs. (And don't let the billionaire corporate media do it either.) Right now, I want Democrats to point out that the states (all Republican controlled) that are sending National Guard troops to Washington D.C. have cities with much higher crime rates than DC, which has reduced its crime rate.
There's also that little thing about Trump pardoning 1,500 criminals who tried to overthrow an election, including many who attacked cops.
The hypocrisy is galling, but on one ever went broke betting the Democrats will find a way to be on the defensive anyway.
Waldman i correct of course, the notion the DC occupation is remotely about crime is ridiculous...so many other cities with higher crime rates...patrolling the Washington Monument instead of neighborhoods with actual crime...all of it is over the top absurd.
Don't forget allowing a convicted pedophile (Andrew Tate) to enter our country; a textbook example of "rapists and criminals coming over our border" that was possible only bc Trump admin enabled it.
Yes, that too...I was just reading about an Israeli official charged as a sex predator in Las Vegas just days ago, then allowed to return to Israel.
Not surprising the Trump admin would have a soft spot for sex offenders.
Yeah the moderate Independent and Republication voters and full on MAGA now don’t even believe reporting on crime statistics. My dad pointed to a shooting at a club in Brooklyn this weekend with a tsk-tsk and when I told him you know crime had actually been going down he said he didn’t really believe “that”… so can we PLEASE stop chasing these voters that are brainwashed beyond repair. My dad is a moderate mostly but MAGA have pulled the middle so fair fascist the middle is still disgusting and going to alienate the young progressives and apathetic.
In the book, "Freakonomics", authors Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt argue the single greatest reason that crime in NYC was reduced by the late 1990s was New York's legalization of abortion in the early 1970s. And, if anyone hasn't read the book by the two economists, it is a great read.
Yeah, that’s how Democrats give up territory. They cede that Republicans are at least partially correct. It’s why Bill Clinton did Welfare Reform and signed Don’t ask don’t tell. Democrats have been ceding the political narrative for decades now so they are quite good at it.
From the article: “I am loath to defend Trump’s takeover of policing in DC,” the author wrote, but the “elites” simply must be taken to task.
I want to know when Democrats became the "elite". We're generally not the ones with all the money.