Democrats unwilling to give up their unpopular soft on crime policies

 Sarah Westwood:

As Democrats work to leave their controversial “defund the police” movement in the past, their party’s embrace of more complicated, but still decisively liberal, criminal justice reforms could leave candidates nationwide vulnerable in November.

Democratic lawmakers have spent years promoting and implementing the elimination of cash bail, sentencing reductions, juvenile prosecution reform, and other changes that critics blame for the increase in violence experienced by most major cities.

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President Joe Biden touched off an effort in June of last year to distance his party from “defund the police” supporters with a high-profile speech that explicitly rejected the idea of cutting law enforcement funding, and his top aides amplified the message as they sought to portray the administration as sufficiently concerned about crime.

But the constellation of other criminal justice reforms that Democrats have championed, and the ensuing crime spike in the places where those policies have been implemented, could continue to saddle the Democratic Party with a liability just as damaging as the one imposed by “defund the police.”

“I think the point is that some issues generally favor one party and some favor the other, and crime is an issue that’s always going to favor Republicans. The Democrats have made it much, much worse by a whole series of policies, and they won’t be able to escape the problem,” Charles Lipson, political science professor emeritus at the University of Chicago, told the Washington Examiner.

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Democrats do this because they think many in their black base want it, although blacks are more likely to be victims of the criminals Democrats are letting off.  It is a dilemma they do not seem capable of fixing.  It is also hard for them to admit that they were wrong about anything.