Democratic strategist James Carville said Wednesday on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360” that Democrats were much better on crime. He cited the now-retired assault weapons ban and “skyrocketing” crime rates in former President Donald Trump’s last year.
Carville said, “Democratic voters have seized control at this point. The people of San Francisco won last night. The faculty at Berkeley, at the University of Berkeley in California, lost. This is not unusual. They lost in Seattle, Minneapolis, Buffalo, Cleveland, New Orleans, New York City. I mean, hopefully, a lot of people in the party and a lot of people that cover the party and influencers understand that Democrats around the country live in this country, and they want a safe country, and they want people to pay attention to them. The people that do the work and walk the streets and ride mass transit and go to the hospitals and send their kids to school. That who matters in this country, not a bunch of snobby, self-righteous elites.”
He added, “You know, President Biden and President Clinton in 1994 authored and passed an assault weapons ban that was in place for ten years. Then they repealed it. We had 400,000 assault weapons in 1994, now have 20 million. The violent crime rate dropped precipitously between 1994 and 2019. It was only in the last year of President Trump that the crime rate skyrocketed. And I just don’t understand why Democrats, some Democrats, run away from this issue because the Democratic voters are not running away from this issue because they feel it. I feel it here in New Orleans. I talk to people on the street that feel it. And this should be our issue. It really should.”
Guest host John Berman asked, “How much of the struggle do you trace back to the perception, fair or unfair, that your party embraced the defund the police mantra?”
Carville said, “Defund the police is what we call in our business. It’s sticky. Okay, think of ‘It’s the economy, stupid.’ It’s sticky. It’s sticky in a good way, but it’s sticky. Defund the police is sticky in a bad way.”
He added, “Actually, Democrats have a much, much better record on crime than Republicans do. For some reason, we seem to be afraid to run on it. There’s no reason to do that. You look at this sickening stuff with these assault weapons. It’s one of the great Democratic successes ever.”
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