Crime dropped between 2024 and 2025. That is good for America.
It is also a pending political problem for Democrats.
Trump will take credit for the drop.
I expect to see more charts like these in Republican ads this fall:
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| Sharp drop last year in homicides |
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| Drop in all crime categories in 2025 |
Crime data is complex and cannot be summed up by a simple statement that crime declined immediately after Trump took office. Crime has been trending down from the Covid years of 2020 and 2021. Closed schools and businesses, and a country in lockdown, created idle hands so crime rates peaked.
Moreover, Canada showed the same trend, and Trump can't take credit for that.
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| Source: Major Cities Chiefs Association |
Trump is already selling the message that rough policing and removing immigrants are responsible for reduced crime. It will be a persuasive message if Democrats fall into the trap of being defined as anti-police.
Trump succeeds by being a fierce partisan with blunt, absolutist positions -- tariffs on every country, pardon all J6 criminals, deport everybody here illegally, climate change is a total hoax, "wonderful clean coal," and don't wait around for consultants, just bulldoze the East Wing of the White House because he can. To the delight of his base, Trump isn't nuanced.
Tempting as it is for a Democrat to be the opposite of Trump on crime and immigration enforcement, that is a fatal misstep and exactly what Trump wants. He wants Democrats to be his opposite -- in other words -- to favor open borders, and ignore street crime, lawlessness, and disorder. It is going to require some courageous and deft Democratic candidates and message-leaders to voice a middle ground of better policing. It will require a message of nuance.
Democrats face a test. Is there someone among the potential candidates for president who sees the requirement to be not-Trump, while avoiding being Trump's policy opposite. There is a middle-ground in the U.S. that wants ethical, professional policing, and which wants immigration to be well-regulated and some -- maybe many -- current immigrants to stay. But not all of them. Americans do want some deportations. It will require the oratorical skills of a Bill Clinton or Barack Obama. It will take someone who can take a position that seems to meet voters where they are: angry about ICE, but smart about it. It won't be the kind of position that gets enthusiastic clicks. It will seem mushy. Nuance and moderation looks weak when Trump is shaping the issues.
That Democrat has a difficult task, and angry voices within the parry will make the task harder. A Democrat who can succeed in this environment would have rare political talent that I do not see quite yet on the party's bench. It may be there. I hope so. The situation requires it.
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5 comments:
How about supporting police with reasonable, fair oversight. ICE not wearing masks. Let’s make the police the good guys, not the bad guys. I have done critical debriefing with police in two separate suicide by cop incidents and they were brave and heroic in those incidents, unlike how ICE has acted. I like law and order in our politicians and in our police. There’s a popular place for democrats to occupy.
Trump is a convicted criminal, guilty of an attempted coup, who unleashed masked, heavily armed paramilitary goon squads on American cities. Giving him credit for reducing crime would be too ironic. As Lily Tomlin said, “No matter how cynical you get, it is impossible to keep up.
Or maybe, as happens sometimes, 2028 will be a charisma-free presidential election, like the one in 1988 between Mike Dukakis and George HW Bush.
(Although, while HW had zero charisma, Dukakis actually had negative charisma, especially when he took that ride in the tank.)
Trump does shit. He does something every day regardless of how infantile, self serving, or downright stupid it is; he does shit. At some point it matters not what he does. He breaks thru the media boredom and looks busy. Not really rocket science. Sad story.
We all know that Trump doesn't reduce crimes, he commits them. In fact, Jeffrey Epstein's brother Mark submitted a tip to the FBI alleging that Jeffrey was murdered in his jail cell because he was about to name names and that President Trump authorized it. Sounds totally plausible to me.
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