President Joe Biden returned to the White House on Independence Day only to be confronted by another mass shooting before an expected summer of violence ahead of November’s midterm elections.
While Democrats hope to fight the fall campaign on issues such as the Supreme Court‘s decision regarding abortion, the economy and crime are likely to dominate.
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Bud Cummins, a former U.S. attorney, implored Biden and Democrats to drop crime-related “political propaganda and distortion,” particularly with respect to allegations of racial injustice, this summer. Instead, the onetime Arkansas U.S. attorney, who was appointed by George W. Bush and worked under Attorney General John Ashcroft, encouraged leaders to underscore how “we are not going to tolerate illegal conduct.”
“In many cases, the people the Left claims to be protecting are the very people who pay the price in terms of crime victimization,” he told the Washington Examiner.
Cummins called for more law enforcement funding and the election and appointment of prosecutors and chiefs of police who are “more interested in law enforcement than social change,” in addition to applying rules “equally and consistently.”
“Quit dumping the entire problem on law enforcement,” he said. “Explore ways to identify and intervene where we spot red flags of mental imbalance, while still protecting the rights of individuals who may be showing signs for concern but have not committed a crime.”
The White House defended Biden’s uneven response to the Highland Park, Illinois, shooting on Tuesday. Shortly after returning to the White House on Monday following a weekend at Camp David, he shared a statement saying he and first lady Jill Biden were “shocked by the senseless gun violence that has yet again brought grief to an American community on this Independence Day.”
“I recently signed the first major bipartisan gun reform legislation in almost thirty years into law, which includes actions that will save lives,” Joe Biden said. “But there is much more work to do, and I’m not going to give up fighting the epidemic of gun violence.”
Biden expressed the same ideas during an appearance at a White House Independence Day barbecue with military families and afterward to reporters as he greeted guests along a rope line. But he declined to provide specifics when asked whether Highland Park would prompt another round of negotiations: “We don’t know the circumstances yet.”
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre stood by Biden’s sporadic comments during the event, describing his convening of a moment of silence after simply saying “you all heard what happened today” during his remarks as “something he decided.”
“It has been very forceful in saying that we have to take action,” she said of Biden’s tough talk. “To say that this president has not shown urgency is just false.”
Biden still has not addressed civil unrest in Akron, Ohio, after the police shooting death of a black man, Jayland Walker, or how two officers were injured during a free July Fourth concert and fireworks display in Philadelphia. But the incidents contribute to public pessimism underpinning his average 39%-56% approval-disapproval rating, according to FiveThirtyEight, and his 17% right direction-76% wrong track polling, per RealClearPolitics.
It is unclear what other actions the White House and lawmakers will agree to four months before referendum midterm elections on Biden and congressional Democrats other than the Senate confirmation of Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives director nominee Steven Dettelbach, regardless of their rhetoric.
While Democrats such as Maryland gubernatorial candidate and ex-state Attorney General Douglas Gansler are adamant abortion will be a mobilizing force in November, polls have indicated the elections will be decided by such matters as the economy and crime. An Emerson College poll conducted last week, for example, found 6% of respondents citing crime as their top concern after the economy and healthcare. A Monmouth poll also fielded last week revealed 2% were worried about crime.
“The gun issue … the proliferation of guns and the types of guns and those who possess the guns is getting to a point where there’s exhaustion and pushback from people of all parties,” Gansler said.
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Gansler dismissed speculation Biden bore direct responsibility for the crime spike, though he conceded the “defund the police” mantra was “a problem.”
“The economy is a direct part of it,” he added. “We’re also in an aberration. You’re coming out of COVID, which was a time where there was a lot of people with mental health issues that developed — loneliness, isolation, depression — and I think that that’s certainly driving it.”
