New York Mayor Eric Adams would have been the Democrats' runaway choice for president if only he'd kept his campaign promise and cut crime in the Big Apple. No mayoral candidate talked about "safety, safety, safety" more than he. As Adams told MSNBC during the campaign:
"Public safety and justice is the prerequisite to prosperity. And I think that we have become too symbolic, instead of realistic, on how you keep cities safe. And it's time for the Democratic Party to understand this. America wants to be safe. And we can do it with justice at the same time."
If a black mayor had saved New York City, no one could have beaten him. Not only that, but Adams has a black deputy mayor for public safety (Phil Banks), a black police commissioner (Keechant L. Sewell) and a black district attorney (Alvin Bragg).
As conservatives never tire of pointing out, murder victims are overwhelmingly black (as are murder perpetrators, but let's not mention that). In a world that has only recently discovered that "Black Lives Matter," wouldn't an all-black law enforcement team come down like a sledgehammer on crime?
Adams wasn't setting some pie-in-the-sky, impossible goal for himself. You don't have to go back to the 1950s to conceive of a safe New York. Just think back to about five years ago. New Yorkers lived in a virtually crime-free city for 20 years under mayors Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg.
In fact, those mayors made the city so safe, even communist Mayor Bill de Blasio couldn't wreck it overnight. It took a virus from China (which apparently required that criminals be released, but citizens be locked up) and a fentanyl addict dying in Minneapolis for him to spring the criminals it had taken Giuliani and Bloomberg 20 years to catch.
The point is: You can't fool New Yorkers anymore. They know it's possible to keep violent psychos off the street.
Just not by a Democrat.
The problem is, no Democrat can support any policy that would reduce crime because, unfortunately, that would simply not be possible without putting more "black bodies" in prison.
SIRENS BLARE! TA-NEHISI COATES DESCENDS FROM THE HEAVENS.
The Democratic Party treats black criminals as sacred beings, much like the temple in India where they worship rats.
Recall that when Bloomberg ran for president in 2020, he had to apologize for policies that reduced murders from 600 a year to an astounding 300 a year -- in a city where more than 60% of murder victims are black, and nearly 90% are black or Hispanic.
Apology not accepted!
Yes, perhaps vastly more black lives would "matter" in the sense of continuing to exist. But more "black bodies" would be subjected to stop-and-frisk by the police. Obviously, that's a no-go. Unpack your invisible backpack, white supremacist!
Liberals love to boast about New York's murder rate going up at a less astronomical clip than other crimes. Well, yeah -- criminals are notoriously poor marksmen. They are approximately as likely to hit small children and elderly bystanders as their intended target. Congratulations, New York!
On the other hand, shootings in the city have gone from about 900 a year in 2018 to nearly 2,000 a year, according to The New York Times.
It turns out Adams is the Democrats' Donald Trump: All talk, no action.
There were hints that Adams wasn't going to get the job done when, earlier this year, Politico reported he was meeting with crime experts Al Sharpton and Joe Biden. He proudly noted that he'd recently thanked a group of police officers ... for letting a perp get away. (At least no black bodies were hurt!) He even suggested that a video of the escaping suspect be screened for officers to show them how it's done.
Commenting on the episode, Adams said, "You have to inspect what you expect or it's suspect." Doggerel from elected officials often precedes a collapse in crime rates.
Apart from encouraging cops not to do their jobs, Adams' main anti-crime initiative has been to slap "Gun Free Zone" signs around Times Square.
So how's it going? In addition to the shootings, since Adams has been mayor, forcible rape is up 63%, grand larceny 38%, robberies 24%, car theft 25% and major felonies in the transit system 51%.
Every single day, there's a new mind-blowing crime in New York.
Here are a few vignettes from Life in the Big City: On Tuesday this week, a 19-year-old public school teacher's assistant in Brooklyn was shot in the head outside his school in the middle of the day. Last Thursday, three New Yorkers were stabbed on the subway within seven hours, one fatally. The previous Saturday night, nine (extremely body-positive) women dressed from head to toe in neon green bodysuits boarded the subway at Times Square and proceeded to pummel and rob a couple of 19-year-old girls. Days earlier, a random psycho stabbed an EMS worker to death in a frenzied attack in broad daylight outside a Queens deli.
The bad news for New York is that unless Lee Zeldin is elected governor this November, there is no hope. Things will continue to spiral downward into a dystopian horror. The good news for the country is that at this stage, it looks like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis isn't even going to have to campaign to be our next president.