Two apparently unconnected issues that top the headline news endanger Democrats’ election hopes. I say “apparently” because although the events are taking place in different countries, both are tied indissolubly to the Left and to the party in power in Washington. I refer to surging violent crime rates in the United States and to popular protests against socialist tyranny in Cuba.
Official 2020 crime figures are not out, but preliminary estimates are that there were 25% more killings last year than in 2019 and that the rate has accelerated in 2021. Media outlets that run interference for President Joe Biden note that the murder rate is still only half what it was at its 1980 peak, but this muddying of a problem with anodyne historical context cannot obscure the salient fact that the trajectory is sharply upward.
Even if the Democratic fan base refuses to acknowledge where blame lies, Biden doesn’t. That’s why he called his panicky July 12 White House meeting on crime. He was scrambling to tamp down a growing public conviction that Democrats are weak on crime. An ABC News/Washington Post poll late last month found 20% more people disapproving of Biden’s handling of crime than approving of it and 59% saying it is a serious problem, with “extremely serious” at a 20-year high. You can see the whites of Democrats’ eyes as Republicans head toward 2022 and 2024 elections as the law and order party.
Biden’s officials listened to the president with furrowed brows, as though his proposed solutions were serious. They weren’t. He laid blame on rogue gun dealers, touted “strike forces,” which sound dynamic and convey the idea that he’s taking decisive action, and pressed for passage of his infrastructure bill because a (small) portion of its gazillions would be used to hire police officers.
This is just hand flapping to distract voters from the fact that the Left and the Democrats have relentlessly undermined the rule of law for more than a year. They sided with vandals and rioters from last summer onward and proudly excused violence as legitimate political protest. They supported the “defund the police” movement and actually defunded them in some places. The Left and its party systematically promoted lawlessness, and no amount of tinkering and posturing now will undo the damage they’ve done.
Similarly, acute embarrassment is visited upon Democrats by unrest in Cuba. The people of Havana and dozens of other cities rose up to demand freedom and denounce the communist regime that has repressed them since 1959. COVID-19 has made Cuba’s economic misery worse, but it was embarrassing when the Biden administration’s initial reaction, from Julie Chung, an assistant secretary of state, was to describe the spontaneous protests as expressing “concern about rising COVID cases/deaths & medicine shortages.”
That’s not what “LIBERTAD” means. It’s not what’s intended by Cuban protesters flying American flags, just as Hong Kongers flew them recently during protests against repression by the Chinese Communist Party. It’s about freedom and a rejection of socialism.
Rep. Dan Crenshaw asked Chung why it is “so hard” for the administration to stop providing cover for communists. The answer is that the Democratic Party does not disapprove of them because many Democrats are socialists themselves. Cubans know socialism brings repression and misery and is against nature. But a great portion of active Democrats, perhaps the majority and certainly the loudest segment of the party, share the ideology with the tyrants in Havana.
Our homegrown socialists claim to stand with the downtrodden people of the world but fall silent when people downtrodden by leftists demand freedom. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the heart of the U.S. socialist movement, for once has nothing to say. Sen. Bernie Sanders tells Fox News, “I support throughout Latin America and every place else the right of people to protest for a decent economy and for political freedom.” But it’s not true. Support isn’t an answer forced from you by a pointed question. That’s the same as politicians who claim they’re “taking full responsibility” for their actions as a way of avoiding taking actual responsibility. Real support is calling for regime change in Havana, letting ordinary Cubans know you’re on their side, acknowledging that state control brings misery, and calling on the Biden administration to pressure Cuba for democratic change. Don’t hold your breath waiting for that from Sanders.
Democrats and the ideology that now consumes their party have been starkly exposed by ordinary Cubans who have lived under its heel for three generations. They’ve also been starkly exposed by spiking rates of violent crime here at home. On both, their worldview and policies have been revealed as destructive. On both, they are on what their hero, former President Barack Obama, refers to as “the wrong side of history.”
