Right now, 75% of Americans believe violent crime is a big problem and growing worse. This is not a GOP talking point because a record 16% of US families – 25% for minorities – have a member who’s been a victim of crime (source: TIPP). Only 37% trust Democrats to solve the problem, which is nothing new. Not since June 6, 1986, when Governor Michael Dukakis (D-MA) furloughed murderer Willie Horton.
Democrats claim to follow the science, except when it comes to criminology; a behavioral science that is data-driven. The data links violence (assault) to anti-social disorder (jumping subway turnstiles) that blue cities have de-criminalized. The data predicts violent-inmate recidivism, but blue states chase “social justice” through mass-decarceration that puts law-abiding citizens in harm’s way. GOP campaigns are now running against this madness.
The liberal response is to recall the “Willie Horton” ad from the 1988 Bush campaign (Lee Atwater’s ploy to expose Dukakis as soft on crime) to suggest GOP anti-crime ads are “racist dog whistles” that rally white voters against Democrats. New York Magazine: “It’s Willie Horton Season in the Midterms.” The Philadelphia Inquirer: “The GOP has ripped a racist page from a 1980s playbook to scare voters around crime.”
Democrat strategist Cornell Belcher let it all hang out: “This is Willie Horton 2.0, a blatant attempt to exploit white anxiety about dark-skinned felons.” Too bad he was mad at the wrong party, because Al Gore (D-TN) first described the prison furlough program as “weekend passes for convicted criminals” to prove presidential front-runner Dukakis was a soft-on-crime liberal in April 1988 – six months before Republican Bush (source: Washington Post).
Democrats should blame reporter Susan Forrest of the Eagle-Tribune in Lawrence, Massachusetts, who wrote “Brutal Killer Caught After Vicious Binge” in April 1987; one of her many articles about inmates on life sentences being released on 48-hour honor system furloughs. One of those inmates was Horton, who had tortured and murdered a Lawrence gas-station attendant, Joey Fournier, in 1974.
Horton was supposedly serving a life sentence without parole in a Concord (MA) prison in 1987; when he broke into the home of a young Maryland couple on his tenth furlough, bound and tortured the man, and raped and stabbed the woman. This crime was newsworthy in Lawrence because of the Fournier murder and Horton’s release by the Massachusetts governor.
Forrest’s reporting caught the eye of editors at Reader’s Digest, who published “Getting Away With Murder” in June 1988. Diana Allocco, a Digest senior editor at the time, now writes that Dukakis lost the presidency because the article – that didn’t mention Horton’s race – told 28 million readers the “horrific story of human suffering and injustice, and what always happens to ordinary people under liberal-run systems of crime-without-punishment.”
The Washington Post reported that Atwater was on vacation in July 1988, when he overheard two couples discussing that Reader’s Digest article. Many millions of Americans were already disgusted with Dukakis before October, when Atwater aired the “Willie Horton” ad in only 1% of TV markets. Democrats ran with the “racist dog whistle” theory, but knew they were soft on crime. Suffice it to note they got tough on crime in the 90s – because Bush won in a landslide.
That’s when Biden said, “one of my objectives, quite frankly, is to lock Willie Horton up in jail” and “we do everything but hang people for jaywalking in this bill.” After the 1994 Clinton Crime Bill, Hillary crowed it took “these people on – they are not just gangs of kids – that are super predators. No conscious, no empathy” (source: C-SPAN). Suffice it to note Democrats got soft on crime (again) after Black voters didn’t turn out for Ms. Clinton in 2016.
It began in blue cities with non-prosecution of offenses, eliminating cash bail and commuting sentences. It snowballed in 2020, when progressives pushed decarceration and de-funding the police. After two years of decriminalized crime, voters’ interest in social justice has waned and Democrats have a “Willie Horton” problem (again). They dismiss GOP calls for law and order as “racist” talking points (again).
Things are different today. Identity politics can’t hide the fact that violent crime is up in Democrat-led cities, where residents – of every race – know coddling criminals is not social justice. Blacks know crime is worse in their precincts. Hispanics know the southern border is a combat zone. Women watch the rob-and-run heists on social media. Everybody sees the White House ignore the issue. These voters are about to be heard.
In its latest poll, the New York Times found a seismic shift in blacks (18%), Hispanics (38%), and women (55%) away from the Democrat Party. This aligns with what I’ve observed in the Real Clear Politics polling averages since September; every House-contest change (18 and counting) has shifted away from the Democrat. Every single one – and that’s not easily dismissed!
Baby boomers have seen high inflation, and millennials have seen crashing stock indices, but no generation has seen such disorder (shooting heroin) in public spaces or cops standing idly while gangs loot a CVS. Law and order cannot be a social experiment – not like this. President Biden and his party are about to learn this the hard way.