Gee, I wonder why? Actually, NBC News does a pretty good job of explaining why crime has begun to resonate in the midterm elections, especially in key Senate races. They may not connect all of the dots, but at least they aren’t claiming that Republicans are creating this issue out of whole cloth.
Even if the framing here has more than a whiff of the Republicans Pounce!® narrative, it’s because crime has become an acute issue for voters:
Republicans have unleashed a barrage of negative ads in the final weeks of the midterms that hammer Democrats on crime.
In at least two states, the strategy appears to be taking hold.
Recent polling suggests that after GOP Senate candidates zeroed in on crime in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, the trajectory of the races shifted. In Wisconsin in particular, the negative ads have relentlessly targeted Democratic Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, who is challenging Sen. Ron Johnson.
Pouncing Republicans often pounce on crime when they’re not seizing on it, NBC helpfully explains. However, the pouncing in this cycle is especially effective at seizing momentum in large part because, y’know, crime has gone through the roof over the last two years and Democrats refuse to do anything about it.
Except, of course, to try to slough off criticisms of rising crime rates by breaking out the Racist Dog Whistle® dismissal:
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Although Republicans have long turned to a playbook of attacking Democrats for not being tough enough on crime, pollsters like Franklin and strategists interviewed by NBC News said the strategy seems particularly effective this year amid rising crime rates across the U.S. and elevated voter concerns about the issue. Some Democrats have argued that Republicans are deploying scare tactics and racist dog whistles on purpose to mislead voters about their rivals.
But some Democrats have also grown alarmed that the attacks are resonating. Several Wisconsin Democrats said in interviews that Barnes knew the attacks were coming and are concerned the campaign hasn’t done more to keep the issue from becoming a defining aspect of the race.
The attacks are resonating because crime isn’t just a “dog whistle.” It has become an unpleasant reality of the American daily lived experience, one that Democrats made much worse with their Defund the Police support a couple of years ago and the refusal by Joe Biden and Democratic leadership to take seriously ever since. Crime is still ticking upward, and yet Democrats have done nothing about it after nearly two full years of control of Congress — not even passing an easy lay-up of a police funding bill, thanks to progressive refusal to address the issue.
Voters experience this a lot more personally than most do with abortion, and yet the latter is all that Democrats want to discuss. Harry Enten warned two days ago on CNN’s New Day that crime would become a potent issue in the home stretch of the midterms (via Grabien):
ENTEN: “Crime and abortion, because both of those, the placement on that chart was surprising to me, so I was interested, what are people searching for on Google? What is it that comes to their minds? So this is Google searches, crime vs. Abortion, the percentage among those who searched for either. Look around the time that Roe v. Wade was overturned in June, crime was just at 30% of all the searches that people were searching between crime and abortion. Abortion was at 70%. In May, again, abortion higher than crime, in July it was basically tied, abortion slightly higher than crime, but look now in September, crime 71% to just 29% for abortion. That is basically back to the pre-Roe v. Wade overturning sort of baseline, where we were back in April when crime was making up 74% of the searches versus abortion at just 26%.”
Voters decide on candidates based primarily on their lived experiences. What have Democrats contributed to that over the past two years? Massive inflation, huge spikes in crime, and a historic border crisis — all of which they have ignored while pursuing the progressives’ Green New Deal hobby-horse agenda. Republicans don’t need to pounce or seize on those issues. They only need to remind voters of the misery in which they live and who has been in charge while creating it.
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