HOW THE DEMOCRATS SHOULD FIGHT BACK ON CRIME

 

After saying on the campaign trail that he would lower inflation, President Donald Trump's tariffs have caused prices to increase.  After promising not to cut Medicaid, he recently signed a spending bill that did just that.  The Russian invasion of the Ukraine, which he claimed he could end in one day, is still ongoing, and a recent meeting between him and Russian leader Vladimir Putin, in which Trump literally rolled out the red carpet for the man that the International Criminal Court considers a war criminal,  ended with Putin conceding nothing while Trump, as usual, fawned over him pathetically.

Clearly, Trump is failing at all of these things.  But one thing he is good at is finding something to distract the media from his failures.  About two weeks ago, after lying about violent crime rates in our nation's capitol, he sent both FBI agents and the national guard to patrol the streets of Washington DC.,  despite no law officer or political leader there saying that they were needed.  Trump has also threatened to send troops to other cities  like Chicago while continuing to spread lies about violent crime rates.  In one truly odd moment, he claimed that “The people in Chicago, are screaming for us to come now...African American ladies, beautiful ladies are saying, ‘Please, President Trump, come to Chicago, please.’  I did great with the Black vote, as you know. They want something to happen."  (For the record, Trump got only 15% of the Black vote in 2024 overall, and only about 7% of the Black female vote).

Along with distracting the media and letting Trump look tough without actually accomplishing anything (the national guard troops are mostly just standing around in low crime areas), bringing up the issue of crime lets Trump turn to a subject that voters have mostly favored Republicans on for years.  This is despite the fact that, except for a spike during the pandemic, violent crime has been on a downward slope for decades in this country.  Sadly, that message hasn't gotten through to the public; in a 2024 Gallup poll, 64% of Americans thought that crime in the country was increasing, even as crime numbers shrank to per covid levels.  The tricky thing is that telling people that their fears are unfounded by the facts doesn't seem to work, especially when those fears are stoked by local news broadcasts featuring crime stories non stop and right wing politicians pushing the idea that cities with Democratic mayors are awash with crime.

But I think the Democrats should fire back on this issue, and Trump's actions  have left him open to an attack on his tough on crime credentials.  I'm talking about his pardoning of over 1500 January 6th protestors, some of whom, despite his claim to support the police, violently attacked capitol police officers. A December 2024 YouGov survey showed that over 60% of voters opposed his pardoning them, so already most of the public think that that was wrong.  Things gets worse for Trump when you consider that some of those pardoned protestors have gone on to commit more crimes after being released.  I really think that the Democrats should make a big issue of this, releasing television ads and giving speeches pointing out that it was a Republican president who let convicts out onto our streets to wreak more havoc.  Make it an issue at every debate until every Trump supporter in the country has to explain why pardoning criminals was a good thing.  And use the names of the criminals to personalize it, like Brent John Holdridge who was arrested for grand theft just last May, or Matthew Huttle who was killed while resisting arrest within days of his release.

As a progressive, I don't like tough on crime rhetoric in general, but using it against the Republican party for defending Trump's pardoning of the January 6th rioters is just fine by me.  That was one pardon Trump should have never made, and I hope it comes back to haunt him in 2026.