More good news for Joe Biden
When it comes to crime, swing voters have historically had a tendency to lean Republican – preferring tough rhetoric to hearing lots of abstract plans about criminal justice reform, when right-wing candidates can effectively paint their opponents as “soft on crime.”
This was a big reason that activists chanting “Defund the Police” cost Democrats a number of toss-up elections in moderate districts that they should have won during the 2020 election and a number of important local races in 2021 as well. It was a terrible slogan that coincided with a year when violent crime was at significant highs – even if they were nowhere near what they were in the 1980s-90s – and it made actual policing reform much harder to accomplish since you couldn’t talk about it without the slogan coming up.
Donald Trump is hardly different than his predecessors when it comes to talking about violent crime, using it to conjure up the bigoted nightmares of his base, but despite all of his bluster, it was his successor who actually did something about violent crime – and made the rates drop significantly. Aside from signing the first gun control legislation in over 30 years, the rates of homicide are down nearly 13% since last year – particularly in major cities, which is usually the ire of right-wing rhetoric.
That’s hardly a one-off trend either, with murder rates dropping 6% between 2022 and 2023, rapidly dropping from record highs – the highest rate of decrease in nearly 60 years. If you want a party that actually is serious about dealing with crime, you should vote Democratic and make sure everyone you knows does the same. Let’s re-elect President Biden with a Democratic trifecta on Nov 5.
James Sullivan is the assistant editor of Brain World Magazine and an advocate of science-based policy making