Opinion- Today's Democrat Should Reject Their Historical Responses to Rising Crime (Doubling Down)

 

Democrats have historically responded to rising crime in two ways. The first is posturing as tough, but not quite as tough on crime as Republicans. This is sometimes a successful electoral strategy (see Eric Adams’s victory in the New York mayoral Democratic primary) — but can result in dangerous policy (see again: Eric Adams’s victory). The second is more problematic: denying crime as a salient issue in the first place, an unconvincing argument that cedes fertile political ground to the GOP. Both approaches also pose potential harm to the Black and brown communities and people whom crime — and criminal justice policy — disproportionately affects.

Democrats need a new path. When they let Republicans define what it means to be tough on crime, it leaves progressive proposals vulnerable to dismissal — as evidenced by the bipartisan backlash to “defund the police.”

“The threat that public alarm over crime will trigger a punitive turn in policy is real,” New York Magazine’s Eric Levitz warns. “But the best way for the left to counter that threat is not to downplay concerns about rising murder rates, but rather to insist that such violence only underscores the necessity of progressive reform.”

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