Fear of Rampant Crime Is Derailing New York City’s Recovery Nice long article, but just by talking about crime, and the media covering it without scrutiny, the new mayor basically made people think crime was much worse than it is.
While crime has trended back down recently it is still substantially higher than it was pre pandemic.
'Substantially' is a pretty slippery word to apply here, but even if we could agree on what qualifies as substantial, the point is that impressions arent colored by statistics, they are colored by media coverage, political rhetoric or symbolic incidents. As I said on another thread, the map precedes the territory. The representation creates the reality.
In terms of homicide it is still about 50% higher than its low. But at the time it is still lower than any year prior to 2012. I understand the point, the rhetoric may lack context and doesn’t align with the most recent trend back downward. But at the same time many may feel that being 25-50% higher off the prior low is not “OK” and still should be lower. If the point is Adams may be riding this politically to his benefit that is probably true.
Its not benefiting him, his approval is way down. He came in championing fighting crime, touted his law enforcement cred, but that basically made more people think crime was out of control, and the media coverage followed which reinforced that impression, and now his approval is down, probably because of that impression at least in part. He made a trap for himself! It also had the effect of making people less likely to return to work, which set back the city's economy and COVID recovery.
Its funny that Dems are always like "Republicans create their own reality" but then basically accept it as their reality thereby making their reality. Maybe tragic and destructive is more accurate than funny.
Perhaps. He may be a one trick pony. I liked some of his messaging and moderation as a Democrat during the campaign, but It wasn’t clear whether that would translate into actually making a good mayor. Mayor of NYC is an extremely difficult job.
Well other Democrats are copying him, unfortunately. Val Demmings is running on crime and being a cop ... for US Senate, which has nothing to do with crime like a mayor. She's even mentioning 'defund the police' (saying its bad) in her ads keeping it alive in people's minds, even though that died in 2020 and the Senate cant really 'defund the police.'
While I suspect you disagree, some Democrats in purple areas want to signal they care out about issues that the middle class voters care about and are not beholden to the party’s woke warrior ruling class.
Yeah, based on your podcast list, you're huffing the Bari Weiss fumes pretty hard. Val Demmings is basically as establishment Dem as it comes, and shes running a campaign around the party's core strategy for 30+ years, 'triangulation' and she'll probably lose to Marco Rubio, who barely shows up to work. She's reproducing the same (Bill) Clintonite strategy that is old hat by now. She's as 'ruling class' friendly as it gets in Democratic politics, so I don't even see how this fits here. She's not running against the party at all!
It would make sense that it's trending back down as things are normalizing and we're out of the fever pitch of pandemic disruption. But there isn't any objective benchmark on where crime "should be" in the aftermath of a pandemic disruption. Don't be so taken in by this idea that being "woke" about social issues is somehow bad. To me this would be your displaying the same type of ignorance that those "middle class" people have when it comes to crime. Most people haven't the foggiest. Their bad ideas are based in fear. We've seen the lack of any understanding of the etiology of criminal behavior or of the criminal justice system response that can at best be described as malpractice.
This was a point I made in the other thread. People wildly misperceive the prevalence of crime, and media coverage plays a huge role in that. We recently saw Chesa Boudin, a progressive prosecutor pushing for evidence-backed changes to the criminal legal system, lose his recall election because the media ran nonstop copaganda misrepresenting the statistical realities in the city. Now, they have a regressive prosecutor who is putting back in place the same policies that have failed for decades.
I like Demings, but unfortunately, she's well behind Rubio right now. Oddly enough (well, the moderates will consider it odd), if you look at the Democrat who is killing it right now in a purple state, it's John Fetterman, who is more aligned with the Bernie wing than the establishment wing of the party.
Just keeping score here…according to your brilliant analysis, all cops are bad and despite “perception”, violent crime is not rising throughout many parts of this country. Thanks for setting us straight.
