The 12-day winning streak of zero murders in our nation’s capital came to a regrettable end this week, and Democrats are breathing a collective sigh of relief. If we can only get our DC murder machine back in gear, they seem to be saying, we can claim Donald Trump’s authoritarian efforts there were a miserable failure.
It won’t work. Crime is down in DC over the past two weeks, and everybody knows it. Even leftist Mayor Muriel Bowser is praising Trump’s deployment of the National Guard there for the reduced crime rate. “We greatly appreciate the surge of officers that enhance what MPD has been able to do in this city,” she said, citing an 87% decrease in carjackings from the same time period last year.
Furthermore, everybody knows that crime is a big deal. As a recent AP/NORC poll showed, a whopping 81% of folks think big-city crime is a “major issue.”
Meanwhile, California Governor and 2028 presidential hopeful Gavin Newsom is having a great time blaming Republicans for the failure of Democrats to control crime in our big cities.
“Look at the murder rate that’s nearly four times higher than California’s — in Louisiana,” said Newsom as he held up a clever flier with Shreveport-born House Speaker Mike Johnson’s face on it. “I want to present some facts to the president of the United States, and I imagine this is alarming to the president to learn these facts, particularly to Speaker Johnson, who has been such a strong partner and ally in these efforts. The carnage in Louisiana is well defined.”
But to the Trump-deranged Democrats who are cheering him on, I say: Enjoy it while it lasts.
As The Washington Post, er, reports: “The pushback from Newsom — who has taken to trolling the president on social media in recent weeks and is a potential 2028 presidential candidate — comes after Trump’s surge of National Guard troops and federal law enforcement agents to D.C., as well as his recent vow to send National Guard troops to Chicago. The president has largely cited the cities’ rampant crime as the reason for the deployments, even though violent crime has fallen in D.C. and Chicago in recent years.”
Hmm … where to start? Yes, Newsom is trolling Trump, and, yes, the Democrat base is all a-twitter about it. But that doesn’t mean it’s an effective long-term strategy. All Newsom is doing is turning folks’ attention toward his preferred narrative and away from his manifold failures as governor. But those failures won’t stay hidden forever. Indeed, The Taranto Principle tells us that while the Leftmedia does Newsom a favor by allowing him to troll Trump with impunity, this favor is actually illusory, even damaging.
How so? By refusing to examine the Oleaginous One’s deeply repellent record as governor now, the legacy media is setting him up for failure later, in a general election, when Republicans will most assuredly hold him accountable not just for California’s soaring crime rate but also for its human trafficking, its poverty, its spiraling debt, its failing schools, its hyper-regulation, its water crisis, its tent cities, its poop patrols — hey, $130,000 a year plus all you can eat! — its bone-crushing taxation, its astronomical cost of living, its calamitous wildfire failures, its unprecedented out-migration, and more.
Remember back in 2004, when John Kerry strode out to the lectern at the Democratic [sic] National Convention and smartly saluted the American people? Remember when he said, “I’m John Kerry, and I’m reporting for duty”? Who among his adoring minions knew then that there was more to his Vietnam record than he and the mainstream media had revealed? Who among them knew that he’d accused his fellow veterans of war crimes reminiscent of Jenjiss Khan? Who among them knew that the real John Kerry was a shameless Purple Heart opportunist, and that one of his “wounds” was quickly “treated” with a tweezer and a Band-Aid?
The CDC’s data tells us that Louisiana did have 19.3 homicide deaths per 100,000 people in 2023, while California’s homicide rate was just 5.1 per 100,000. But that’s because of the disproportionate influence of New Orleans, which has long been one of the nation’s most deadly cities. And New Orleans, like every other deadly big city in our nation — think Chicago, Philly, Detroit, St. Louis, Memphis — has been governed by Democrats for as long as anyone can remember.
“If the president is sincere about the issue of crime and violence,” said Newsom, “there’s no question in my mind that he’ll likely be sending the troops into Louisiana and Mississippi to address the just unconscionable wave of violence that continues to plague those states.”
Uh-huh. Newsom might want to be careful what he wishes for. It just might be that Louisiana Republican Governor Jeff Landry would welcome a collaborative effort between the National Guard and the New Orleans PD.
As for Newsom’s bluster, remember what the Democrats and their media enablers always seem to forget: Their wing-nut base doesn’t win national elections. The Sensible Center wins national elections. And moderate Democrats — to the extent that they haven’t already become moderate Republicans — understand that crime is a hugely consequential issue across our country and especially in our big cities.
Right now, Newsom is sucking up all the oxygen in the Democrats’ room. And by doing so, he’s ensuring that — with apologies to AOC, Jasmine Crockett, and Zohran Mamdani — he alone is the face of the party.
It’s politically brilliant. But Gavin Newsom, like John Kerry before him, is what I call a credit-card candidate. You can buy him now, but you’ll pay for him later.
