Democrats have a Crime Problem
Don't complain about losing sovereignty if you abandon accountability
My childhood faith that the American dream meant constant progress broke upon contact with reality. The second time I visited San Francisco, things were so much worse there than the first. And every visit since, the crime, the filth, the disorder, the pervasive sense of menace — all worse. What puzzled me as a longtime scholar at Stanford is how much denial there was among liberal Californians. “It’s not that bad,” is a disastrous rallying cry, especially when regular people can see the facts on the ground.
The chart here is a result of analysis I just cranked out with the help of ChatGPT 5. The bars represent MSAs using the primary city crime rate as the proxy based on FBI data. Blue bars represent cities with a Democratic mayor and a Democratic governor. Red are Republican-Republican. Gray bars are Republican-Democrat and Purple are Democratic-Republican. For example, the three purple cities of Tampa, Houston, and Atlanta have Democratic mayors in a Republican state.
Results? There are some safe blue cities, but the most dangerous cities are definitely run by Democrats. And to be sure, I’m not confident this chart shows how bad the concentrated inner cities are in places like DC, Chicago, and San Francisco.
There’s a lot missing in this analysis, too, namely that San Diego is a more balanced city in terms of voter registration than Detroit. Detroit is super blue, plus it has been run by the Democratic Party forever. The time dimension matters more than this snapshot chart is able to show.
I think the lesson is that the more careful your data analysis is, the worse things look for Democratic governance. What’s strange to me is that the D denialism about crime may just be their Achilles heel. I know some of my readers are frustrated that I am harping on how the D’s are screwed up in recent posts, but that’s for good reason. Polling shows the DNC is in a death spiral — less popular than ever. Ever. And getting more extreme. I am shocked that my Grandfather’s party is crumbling — this is the grandfather whose framed 1930s electoral pamphlet hangs in my office.
What To Do?
The White House seems intent on making this a political issue, namely by taking over the policing of Washington, DC. That should be applauded, because that’s the nation’s capital, it’s an embarrassing and dangerous mess, and the federal government has every authority to clean it up.
The case for trying to federalize the policing of other crime-ridden cities is less clear. As a federalist, I strongly prefer the 50 states to be in a constant state of competitive experimentation. That also requires that we allow the failed experiments to fail. Farmers in some states shouldn’t have to subsidize cities in other states. Taxpayers in well-run cities shouldn’t have to pay for the policing of poorly run cities. So if San Francisco chooses to enable crime, let San Francisco pay the price. Right? Any intervention is a kind of bailout.
To answer the question “What to do?” we should say, “Let federalism run its course.” Citizens are voting with their feet.
It is not just that the Democrats have a crime problem, it is that WE have a crime problem. I look at your graphs and the thing I see is not the relative lengths between Red and Blue, but the absolute lengths of ALL the lines. Refusing to see this and then acting like it is not real is the primary problem. Red vs. Blue is just the secondary problem.
Some years ago a couple of researchers asked the question, "What percentage of the population is sociopathic?" Their study appeared (to me) to be rigorous. Their conclusion was that at least 5% of the population is sociopathic. However, in their conclusion they opined that, due to their attempt to be conservative in their estimation, they suspected that the number was likely to be at least twice that, they just couldn't entirely support that case with their data set.
Let's assume that their secondary conclusion is correct. That means at least 10% (or more) of people have no internal moral compass that causes them to recognize how wrong is violence against others. In those cases the corrective force/action must be external, i.e. society must enforce the protection of society. That means police and removing those who do violence to others if they cannot or will not control themselves.
As for the Democrats, it does seem that they have moved beyond the ability to recognize this basic fact. Alternatively, it could mean that they don't care. Could it be that getting elected is, to them, more important than the good of society? Don't get me wrong, I think that the Republicans have the same kind of self-serving bias, just in a different direction.
So the real question is how do we ensure that the people we elect to public office are primarily motivated by the good of society as a whole rather than their own self-aggrandizement? We have a systemic problem and that requires a systemic solution, not a band-aid. The real problem is that we need to fundamentally change how our leaders and decision-makers are selected and not just worry about Red vs. Blue.
Meantime, try to get this clear message through the media trough. When back in the day Trump talked about the "sh_thole countries" I had many friends in those countries collected from many deployments globally. Each one agreed with Trump. The cognitive dissonance is simply sad.