How Much Do Black Lives Matter to the Presidential Campaign? - The New York Times - 0 views
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the public has become more adverse to the use of force by government. The most obvious example, he wrote in response to my email inquiry, is war
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Pinker cited 13 other examples in support of his position that people have become less tolerant of violence, including “concern over police violence. During the 1960s race riots, police would kill dozens of young black men in a single night, but the public barely noticed”; “Capital punishment is on the way out”; “Domestic violence (e.g., wife-beating) used to be a joke (as in Jackie Gleason’s “One of these days, Alice – Pow! Right in the kisser”), now it is an abomination”; “Corporal punishment (strapping and paddling) are on their way out of American schools”; “Bullying in the playground, once thought to be a normal or even desirable feature of boyhood, has become a national issue”; and “American football may soon be revolutionized by concern about concussions.”
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Jonathan Haidt, a professor of social psychology at N.Y.U., noted in an email that for liberals, “compassion for those who are suffering is the most crucial virtue.” Conservatives, in contrast, “believe more in ‘just deserts’ and making criminals pay.”
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A study of responses from white male liberals and white male conservatives found that some of the biggest differences were in response to certain statements. Liberal men responded favorably to: “I believe offenders should be provided with counseling in aid of their rehabilitation” and “I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me.” Conservative men agreed with the statements: “I believe ‘an eye for an eye’ is the correct philosophy behind punishing offenders” and “It feels wrong when a person commits a crime and goes unpunished.
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Historically, the crime issue has been a winner for Republicans and a loser for Democrats. Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush all profited from portraying their Democratic adversaries as soft on crime and, at an international level, not sufficiently resolute in fighting terrorism. (Before that, accusations of being “soft on communism” were a winning gambit for Republicans.)
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Allen Matusow, a professor of history at Rice, is the author of “The Unraveling of America: A History of Liberalism in the 1960s,” which chronicled the damage suffered by the political left at a time of riots and rising crime rates. He wrote in an email that he worriesabout the ability of the right to make a few videos and turn some portion of the amorphous middle in the direction of the police. I have acquired great respect for the ability of bad men to manipulate the public.
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The critical factor that will test the viability of the Democratic Party’s liberalized stance on law enforcement and incarceration will be the trends in crime and arrests over the next 12 months leading up to the Election Day.
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If the crime rate for 2015 and 2016 remains as low as during 2014, it will minimize blowback against Clinton’s stands in favor of minimizing incarceration, and, for that matter, against the Obama administration’s decision to release more than 6000 federal drug nonviolent offenders.
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If, however, crime rates shoot up and arrest rates drop in response to less vigorous law enforcement, as advocates of the “Ferguson effect” theory suggest, Democrats risk a repetition of events in the mid and late 1960s.
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This points to one of the paradoxes confronting liberalism: the legislative reform agenda of the left, whether it’s criminal law or reducing unemployment, stands the best chance of passage when the need is small: in good times of high prosperity, lots of jobs, rising pay and declining crime rates. Voters are most generous when they are least threatened and least generous when most threatened.