The Democratic Party's strategy of simply taking the opposite side of every issue President Trump supports isn’t working out very well for them — especially when it comes to public safety.
Since Trump called for National Guard units to assist Washington, D.C. police, the Democratic National Committee claimed that crime isn’t that big of a deal.
A speaker at Monday's DNC Summer Meeting in Minneapolis made that clear.
"Don't take the bait talking about migrant crime or carjackings or the things that actually don't matter to many Americans," said Insha Rahman, a vice president at the Vera Institute of Justice, a far-left Soros-funded think tank.
Rahman suggested that Democrats should instead discuss "the policy proposals that we think work," issues such as "cashless bail."
Violent crime may not matter to this Vera Institute vice president, but it's a pretty big deal to city residents.
Washington, D.C. has one of the highest murder rates among the major U.S. cities, with more than 100 homicides so far this year, an average of nearly three per week. There have been zero murders in the two weeks since the president federalized policing.
While Democrats are blasting the crackdown, local residents, like school teacher Elliot Reed, appreciate it.
"I think it’s a good thing because it actually reinforces the fact that America is secure, safe [and] stable," Reed said. "As a moderate, as a centrist, I think something needs to be done. I have three kids, I’m about to start teaching next week. I want it to be safe."
And yesterday Iris Tao, a White House Correspondent for NTD News, revealed that she'd been mugged and pistol whipped outside her apartment in the past, and thanked Trump in person.
"Mr. President, thank you so much for what you're doing right now," she said. "Thank you for now making D.C. safer for us, our families, and my baby on the way."
Trump's efforts have been so successful that he’s been talking about expanding the effort to other cities, beginning with Chicago. Mayor Brandon Johnson criticized the idea, claiming that traditional methods of crime fighting are unworkable.
"We cannot incarcerate our way out of violence; we've already tried that, and we've ended up with the largest prison population in the world without solving the problems of crime and violence," far-left Democrat Johnson said during a Monday press conference.
"The addiction on jails and incarceration in this country, we’ve moved past that. It is racist, it is immoral, it is unholy, and it is not the way to drive violence down."
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker also blasted Trump’s plan to deploy National Guard troops, and accused him of being a "wannabe dictator."
"This is exactly the type of overreach that our country’s founders warned against," the Democratic governor said.
"What Trump is doing is unprecedented and unwarranted. It is illegal. It is unconstitutional. It is un-American," he remarked, adding that no Chicagoan wants their "neighborhood turned into a war zone by a wannabe dictator."
Too late. Many Chicago neighborhoods are already war zones — he should just ask his constituents.
"The National Guard has to come here, even if it's for scare tactics," said Zoe Leigh, a member of Chicago Flips Red. "There's no control. There's no law and order."
Robert Milan, a former assistant Cook County state's attorney, said it's important that National Guard troops work in concert with city police.
"You don’t want to have Chicago police doing their thing over here and National Guardsmen doing something somewhere else," he said.
Milan said they’d successfully tried something similar when Rahm Emmanuel was mayor, by combining Chicago police with Cook County Sheriff deputies in crime-ridden areas.
"You would see that in those areas; there would be no shootings at all. Really, really dangerous areas," he recalled. "We were listening to gang. . . on wiretaps, and they were saying, 'We really got to get out of here. Police are everywhere. We can’t do anything.'"
The running joke has been that each time Trump supports the 80% side of an 80/20 issue, Democrats take the 20% side rather than agree with him on anything. This time it's even worse for them.
According to polling cited by CNN, 91% of Washington, D.C. residents believe crime is either a moderate or an extreme problem, and Democrats are taking the side of the 9%.
Being openly pro-crime is never a winning strategy, so It's no wonder that Democrats are jumping ship and their funding is drying up.
The most basic function of government at any level — local, state, or federal — is to protect its citizens.
If Democrats can't agree on that, they deserve to go the way of the dodo bird and the woolly mammoth — as an extinct but interesting curiosity.
Michael Dorstewitz is a retired lawyer and is a frequent contributor to Newsmax. He's also a former U.S. Merchant Marine officer and a Second Amendment supporter. Read Michael Dorstewitz's Reports — More Here.
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