Those of us incensed by the attacks on public safety following COVID-19 lockdowns, and the left-wing ideas that inspired such tumult, found last week promising.

On Tuesday, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who once sought nearly $100 million in cuts to the city’s struggling police department, was kicked out of office. She received only 17% of the vote.

Between her execrable efforts to “defund the police” and her primary defeat, Chicago saw homicides hit a quarter-century high.

Despite what insular media espouses, the Windy City is in steady decline. And Lightfoot is among those most culpable.

Paul Vallas, who ran on an anti-crime platform, now enters an April 4 mayoral runoff — as the favorite — against an anti-police radical named Brandon Johnson, a man somehow left of Lightfoot.

“Voters want a mayor who’s going to get the city back on track and who’s going to address its most pressing issues, and obviously, the issue of public safety is front and center,” Vallas explained.

Then on Thursday, President Joe Biden told Senate Democrats he will not veto common-sense Republican legislation that repeals a dangerous Washington D.C. crime bill. The left is apoplectic about this wise move.

The D.C. law is an overhaul that ends most mandatory sentencing, reduces penalties for violent offenses, and expands the requirement for jury trials in misdemeanor cases. It’s a social justice disaster.

The nation’s capital — home to roughly 700,000 residents — witnessed more than 200 homicides in back-to-back years for the first time in two decades. Already this year, D.C. homicides are up nearly 40% from this point in 2022. The local octogenarian congresswoman and Black Lives Matter-loving City Council are OK with more dead residents, particularly black men.

Do we see serious pushback against the totalitarian progressives and misguided libertarians?

In 2021, anti-police lunatics in Buffalo and Seattle were defeated at the ballot box. In December of that year, San Francisco mayor London Breed, once a defund advocate, surprised many by claiming in part, “It is time for the reign of criminals to end…And it comes to an end when are we more aggressive with law enforcement and less tolerant of all the bulls**t that has destroyed our city.”

Even Lightfoot, at some point, declared, “We cannot continue to endure the level of violence that we are now experiencing.”

Last summer, San Francisco’s pro-criminal district attorney, Chesa Boudin, was recalled by some of the most liberal voters in America.

As more of us endure the pernicious consequences of Democrat policies, elected officials should change course.

Maybe last week, Americans suddenly witnessed the Biden of a generation ago.

 

The vast majority of us support the police and want aggressive crackdowns on crime. They abhor the anti-American rhetoric of Reps. Cori Bush, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib.

“The Democrats are well aware that public safety is a huge vulnerability for them,” Matthew Continetti said on Friday’s Commentary Magazine podcast.

Any Democrat choosing the wrong side of the public-safety issue can see their career in peril. Ask Omar.

Due to leftist prosecutors, woke city councils, and abhorrent activists, the battle against anti-police goons is not complete. Thanks to the ill-conceived policies of many deep blue cities, police recruitment is struggling, attrition is rising, and many cops are afraid to do their jobs.

But when we finally restore public safety to its proper perch, it will likely be because voters register their disdain with certain elected officials.

Last week was a good start.

ddd

Ari Kaufman is a correspondent for several U.S. newspapers and magazines from Minnesota and Ohio to Tennessee and Virginia. He taught school and served as a military historian before beginning his journalism career. The author of three books, he is also a frequent guest on radio programs and contributes to Israel National News and here at The Lid. 

ddd