Rising crime wave threatens Democrats’ hold on power in Congress

Homicides continued to climb in 2021 but at a slower pace, according to a recent analysis of crime trends by the Council on Criminal Justice’s Violent Crime Working Group, growing by 5%. And at least 12 major U.S. cities broke annual homicide records in 2021, including Philadelphia, which saw its own highest murder rate since 1990.

FAUCI A GROWING FIXTURE IN GOP CAMPAIGN ADS AND FUNDRAISING

In a January press release, University of Missouri – St. Louis Professor Emeritus Richard Rosenfeld, a co-author of the CCJ study, said, “The elevated rates of homicide and serious assaults require an urgent response from elected leaders.”

“A year ago, we concluded our 2020 crime report by noting that with so many lives at stake, the time to act is now. That message is as vital today as it was then.”

It is not yet clear if a desire for action on crime will ultimately be one of the issues driving voters to the polls in November, but some Republicans appear to hope so.

The sitting president’s party historically loses congressional seats in a midterm election, and the trend seems likely to hold this year due to Biden’s dropping approval ratings. Limited to the issue of crime, just 36% approve of Biden’s job performance, according to a December ABC/Ipsos poll.

A rise of super-liberal local prosecutors also has Democrats on the defensive over crime. In Philadelphia, District Attorney Larry Krasner has been on the receiving end of torrents of criticism for a violent crime crisis in Pennsylvania’s largest city. And in San Francisco, detractors of District Attorney Chesa Boudin say that rates of certain kinds of crime are up in the California city because he does not enforce the law aggressively enough.

It all adds up to weaknesses Republicans are already highlighting.

“The rise in crime can be directly tied to the adoption of cashless bail and other radical, soft-on-crime policies implemented under George Soros-funded, Democratic DAs across the country,” Rep. Jim Banks, chairman of the Republican Study Committee, told the Washington Examiner in a statement. “This began in 2020, when Democratic state and local officials, encouraged by then-presidential candidate Joe Biden, allowed lawless riots to fester nationwide without any consequences.”

Banks, an Indiana Republican, added, “Right now, Americans feel less safe, and they can see, whether it’s violent crime in our communities or illegal immigration at the border, Democrats always put the bad guys ahead of law-abiding citizens.”

On Twitter last week, Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel painted rising crime rates as “the consequences of Democrats’ ‘soft on crime’ policies,” just one of a series of tweets on the subject.

House Republicans have also pointed to Democrats’ policies as behind the spike in crime:

But Democrats argue that a failure to address gun violence contributed to the surge. The White House recently unveiled efforts to reduce gun violence, including a directive to every U.S. attorney’s office to “increase resources dedicated to district-specific violent crime strategies.”

A Feb. 3 release from the White House said Biden “knows a complex and devastating challenge like the surge of gun crime we’ve seen over the last two years requires an ambitious, evidence-based response that uses every tool at our disposal, and that’s exactly what his plan does.”

Rep. Ritchie Torres, a Democrat from New York, recently told CNN that “it’s disingenuous for Republicans to claim to be tough on crime.”

“If you’re soft on guns, you’re soft on violent crime,” he said.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

Estimates about how the crime rate will affect the midterm elections differ. FiveThirtyEight recently noted that crime “doesn’t offer a clear advantage to either political party,” and while Republicans have historically enjoyed an advantage with voters on the issue, former President Bill Clinton’s “rhetoric and policies” chipped away at that advantage.