I'm sure it's a solvable problem for Democrats, but first they have to resolve to address it, rather than just wishing that voters didn't feel this way.
Both; suburban and rural homelessness is less visible, but also less common, in part because urban jurisdictions are inherently more amenable to service delivery (whether by the government or by charities) to the homeless, and homeless people are not nailed down in one place.
> Are they shifting their homeless burden to places like cities with more programs and support for homelessness?
Some of it is “shifting”, some of which is just inherent features of the places conducive to Republican political success in the first place.
> Because I've never actually heard a Republican plan for dealing with homelessness that doesn't involve criminalizing it and sweeping it under the rug where no one can see it.
To be fair, Democratic-run jurisdictions do this a lot, too (there are some exceptions, but they are exceptions even among urban Democratic jurisdictions.) The difference is that heterogenous urban jurisdictions can sweep the homeless out of the places where the people who matter can see them without sweeping them out of the jurisdiction or the range of local government or charity service delivery.
Small town police departments are notorious for running "undesirables" out of their town...redlining and zoning keeping certain people from buying real estate...things like that.
No, they don't. Whether they are actively fighting it, meekly bending to it, or crassly exploiting it for intra-party power games (and there are clear examples of all of those among nationally prominent Democrats), national Democrats understand very much how those things, and even more the right-wing media narratives around those things, drive opinion.
The internal dominance of the center-right faction of the party for the last 30 years has been built almost entirely on exploitation of this.
But if you show the video of someone robbing a convenience store (in oakland! another city entirely!) enough times on loop, you can convince enough voters that Something Must Be Done.
Crime is visibly exploding, the police are only recording the most heinous/obvious incidents, and then we're told that crime is down.
Cites statistics.
I think the one thing with the data is how much crime it takes to make a neighborhood feel unsafe. And my hypothesis is that the threshold is very, very low. Like double digits low. It doesn’t take much to rattle the psyche of a community.
But sure. Crime falls by 40% during a DA’s tenure (hypothetical example) so all is well right? But what is the absolute number and what does that absolute number translate to in the real world?
Given the degree to which opposition to Boudin comes from other progressive Democrats, including politicians, in SF, the article we are discussing about a “message” to “Democrats and the nation” is an example of that.
There you go the clear graph: https://www.economist.com/united-states/2022/06/05/why-san-f...
If anything, the right has largely shifted to the center over the course of my life. For example: they, along with Democrats for quite a while, were opposed to gay marriage. While I'm sure there's still a small contingent that would roll that back if they could it's very much not an issue for the party anymore.
The left, or at least a good portion of the democratic party? They've gone off the rails in the past 10+ years. Everything is now about race or sex. Everything. It's 100% OK to discriminate against white men. We should have open borders. Abortion should be legal up until birth. Prepubescent children should be allowed to go on hormone blockers and get surgery if they think they're trans. Transwomen should be able to compete against women in sports. The Kavanaugh confirmation was a disgusting point in US history. Let's ban guns. The list could go on.
From what I see, Republicans largely want things to stay the same or be rolled back by a decade or so.
I am not saying there is anything wrong with American Democrats but if you look at actual policies they would be labeled centre right anywhere else in the world.
As an American friend once put it to me "Americans believe luck is made, so social handouts are basically perceived as tax payer theft".
I’m just going to say it: the perception of where the American Democratic Party or the American Republican Party sits only matters to American voters. To whatever extent it interests foreigners, I’m happy to provide the entertainment as I take plenty of entertainment watching foreign politics myself, so fair is fair, but an outside observation of where we sit politically isn’t an actionable or useful observation because we’re not those other countries.
That isn’t to say there isn’t anything to be learned from the actions of other governments, whatever their domestic political makeup, but I am happy that if this were 1792 neither major American 2022 political party would be perceived to be getting buddy-buddy with the left of the French National Assembly. Actually gives me some hope for my country to think of it that way.
I hear this a lot, but as someone who's fairly up on politics in a few Western European countries I don't think it's accurate.
For example, the current democratic party platform supports universal healthcare, mass immigration with a roadmap to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, expansion of visas and a removal of wealth/income requirements, a major commitment to environmental protection and an acknowledgement of climate change including getting to net-zero emissions and devoting tens of billions to foreign aid.
That's all pretty in-line with left wing political manifestos/platforms in most of western europe.
Not in terms of social policies. How many European centre-left policies support giving puberty blockers to children? How many European centre-left policies support abortion right up to the time of birth?
Like in no specific order: poverty, bleak future, failed "common" education system, state supported/tolerated exploition of citizens, failing police, falling justice system (if you ask they are meant to protect citizens), systematic deep rooted discrimination, toleration of fascism
Your list begins to muddy the idea though. Poverty may be the only thing of great import mentioned.
Ignoring criminality (in the name of 'equity') develops into a situation seen in SF, Seattle and Portland. Preventing crime is not itself a draconian practice. Having some kind of penalty for criminal behavior is not draconian.
Ignoring crime and allowing criminals to go unpursued is a demoralizer for the entire community
If there are no consequences, then a percentage of the population will go nuts.
I've had a few young kids ask about going to California to get toys since you don't have to pay for them there. In their mind it's a great deal. Explaining that it's wrong even though you get away with it is awkward.
The problems need solutions which are not fully but to a non-small degree independent of classical "crime fighting" decisions.
But you are right, war on crime makes no sense. It should be on _criminals_. Basically, if they have strength left to exercise in prisons they are clearly too well fed and not worked hard enough.
national-socialist are one movement which is fascist, they are by far not the only one. (Nazis are fascist with socialist paint coat).
The US never had (internally) a problem with nazis, I think. But it does have a problem with white supremacist. It also does have a problem with religious extremist, most times Christian based. Both of this groups have quite a bit of overlap and have often strong fascist tendencies.
And sure California might be one of the US states better of. Tbh. especially with the last statement I was more thinking about some other US states.
