The murder of Ukranian refugee Iryna Zarutska and President Donald Trump’s federal takeover of security in Washington DC are highlighting why today’s urban, cosmopolitan Democratic Party is failing to connect with the voters it once relied on for victory.
The Democratic Party of Bill Clinton understood that winning the support of middle class and blue collar voters was essential to the party’s success. This is why Clinton ultimately signed the 1994 crime bill, and welfare reform in 1996.
Yet the party’s reaction to the brutal slaying of a Ukranian refugee on a Charlotte metro train highlights just how far the party has lost touch with its former self.
Rather than hold the criminal to account, Democrat Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles issued a lengthy statement blaming anyone and everyone other than the man who stands accused of plunging the knife into Ms. Zarutska’s neck.
While Clinton signed a tough crime bill into law and famously gave his “sister Souljah” speech calling out the rapper for giving a green light to violence, Ms. Lyles rambled on about the “unhoused,” “access to mental health care,” and failures of “the system.”
In doing so, the mayor is following a precise script which has been fine tuned over the last 20 years to shift the public policy debate away from accountability and deterrence and into an alternate reality where the criminals are the victims, and blame is diffused across so many institutions that no one is accountable, no one is to blame, and the situation worsens with each passing year.
The Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund just yesterday released a report highlighting how just one left wing group has been providing assistance to left wing district attorneys across the country, helping them to sell their soft-on-criminal policies.
Concurrently, President Donald Trump has acted decisively to shift the federal government’s posture from one of tolerating violence, open air drug markets and homeless encampments in the nation’s capitol – to solving it. In doing so, he is demonstrating the difference between managing a problem, and solving it.
Most Americans believe the nation’s capitol should be not only clean and safe, but it should stand as a point of pride, epitomizing the greatness of America.
The founding fathers intended for the nation’s capitol to be administered by the federal government. Nowhere does the Constitution endorse outsourcing that responsibility to an inept local body, and the results over the last five decades illustrate the disaster “home rule” has been.
In statements such as Mayor Lyles’, and the reflexive negative response to the President’s actions to restore the nation’s capitol, we can see perfectly why today’s Democratic Party is falling short where Bill Clinton’s Democrats succeeded.
Trapped in their left wing, cosmopolitan mindset, the party is unable to see how Americans expect their communities and the nation’s capitol to be safe.
The President’s actions, rather than undermining democracy, strengthen it. The persistent failure of left wing politicians to arrest the dramatic decline in America’s cities undermine confidence in ourselves, and our system of government. Americans need to see that we can solve problems again, and that we do not have to live with the new normal created by failed left wing policies on crime, homelessness, mental illness and drugs.
Ron Nehring is a former Chairman of the California Republican Party