Sometimes you’ve got to wonder if Democrats are deliberately trying to get Donald Trump re-elected.
Whether it’s socialized medicine or open borders or impeachment or some big government handout, the electorally challenged Democratic Party, its presidential candidates, and the so-called “squad” of ultra-progressive congresswomen are embracing it.
The latest example is criminal justice reform, and U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley’s plan to cut slack to criminals.
The Pressley resolution is called “The People’s Justice Guarantee” and it means there is no guarantee that criminals will be put in jail.
It’s actually a package of die-hard liberal proposals that are aimed at dramatically reducing the prison and jail population. But it goes much further than that.
Under Pressley’s resolution there would be no prosecution of lower level offenses like drug possession, criminal trespass and other supposedly nonviolent crimes that are linked to poverty. It would also decriminalize consensual sex work, and ban the death penalty, life without parole, cash bail, mandatory minimum sentences and solitary confinement. And it would give incarcerated felons the right to vote.
You want to rip off some elderly lady’s handbag? Or stock up on heroin? Go right ahead. It’s guaranteed you’ll stay out of jail. You want to vote for Bernie Sanders but you can’t because of that little murder conviction on your record? We’ll hand you a ballot.
If you think you’ve heard this one before, it’s because you have.
Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins is currently implementing a similar plan to give get-out-of-jail-free passes to low-level criminals. And other Democratic DAs across the country are trying the same thing.
It’s all the rage in the Democratic Party, while Republican prosecutors and other law-and-order types are pushing back.
“It will lead to more crime,” Cape and Islands District Attorney Michael O’Keefe told the Herald.
“If you’re not incarcerating and not fining, then it continues to enable bad behavior,” Marshfield Police Chief Phil Tavares said.
Pressley’s “People’s Justice Guarantee” is modeled after the “Green New Deal” and its sweeping proposals to combat climate change.
Like the Green New Deal, Pressley’s resolution, released last month, hasn’t exactly been fast-tracked for passage by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has clashed with Pressley’s squad, led by U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Pressley will have trouble getting moderate House Democrats to endorse her resolution, let alone Republicans. It is absolutely dead on arrival in the Republican-controlled Senate.
At an “Equity Agenda” event on Sunday, Pressley touted her resolution, saying, “I do not believe that mass incarceration has made us any safer.”
But what about making Democrats more electable? Does Pressley’s plan do that?
Trump would have a field day running against “The People’s Justice Guarantee,” much the way he’d tear to shreds Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren on “Medicare for All.”
Cut to the commercial showing a serial killer filling out a ballot. Or a menacing mugger lifting a purse from a poor defenseless senior citizen. Or a drug dealer cutting up cocaine. Or a mass murderer getting parole. Then show a prison door swinging open and the mugger and drug dealer and murderer walking out.
Does this oversimplify and distort what Pressley’s proposal is all about? Sure. That’s politics. And it’s also reality.
Democrats running a far-left agenda are facing an energized, well-funded Republican Party. It will be ugly. And it’s not a winning agenda.
Just ask Jeremy Corbyn and Britain’s defeated Labour Party.
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