After the sickening, violent attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, we were faced with a rare sight: Democrats demanding justice for the victim of a violent crime.
Pelosi’s attacker, David DePape, shockingly told police he planned to tie up Ms. Pelosi and fracture her kneecaps.
But when he broke into her home to find the speaker, he attacked her 82-year-old husband, cracking Paul’s skull with a hammer.
There is not a sane American who was not outraged and deeply saddened by this heinous attack.
On Tuesday, DePape was charged with attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, elder abuse, home burglary, false imprisonment and threatening the life of or causing serious bodily harm to an officer.
He was initially held without bail because of the “extreme threat to public safety” he poses.
This is exactly how a violent, mentally ill, homeless person who assaulted a vulnerable, elderly person should be treated.
And yet all too often progressives spend their time standing up for the perpetrators of crime, their victims be damned.
Consider Keaira Bennefield, a mother of three, who shared with police footage of her husband brutally beating her.
There is not a sane American who was not outraged and deeply saddened by this heinous attack.
“I was screaming for help the whole time,” she told investigators. ‘I thought I was going to die.’
But her husband was only charged with one misdemeanor and released without bail, after which he murdered Keaira in front of their three children.
Or think of Tommy Bailey, a father of three, who was stabbed to death on a New York City subway by a homeless man, Alvin Charles, who was released without bail after stabbing another man on another subway .
Or remember Saiko Koma, who was killed by a man with three armed robbery arrests who was on probation when he murdered her.
Or think of Rong Xin Liao, an 84-year-old grandfather who, like Paul Pelosi, had his head bashed in when 24-year-old Eric Ramos-Hernandez jumped him in the face.
Unlike David DePape, Ramos-Hernandez was released from prison and “diverted” to his own home for “mental treatment.”
Too bad Rong Xin Liao and Saiko Koma and Keaira Bennefield weren’t lucky enough to be rich, white and married to political nobles, or they may have seen justice too.
They may have been met with representatives who cared more about them, the victims of heinous acts of violence, than their attackers and killers.
Instead, because they weren’t white and rich and royal, they were treated to the usual fare of a party that campaigns endlessly for bail reform laws and working-class homeless camps and compassion for violent, mentally ill drug addicts.
Why don’t they have more sympathy for their own constituents?
81 percent of black Americans and 82 percent of black Democrats told the Pew Research Center that crime is a “very important” factor in who they will vote for in these midterm elections.
You’re right to be concerned: violent crime is on the rise across the country and is disproportionately affecting black Americans.
From New York to Mississippi to Louisiana, black Americans make up the majority of murder victims despite representing a small minority of the overall population.
You would think that the party, which has relied on black voters for every political victory in recent memory, would prioritize its most loyal voting bloc.
You would be wrong.
Unfortunately for victims of violent crime, the same Pew study found that only 33 percent of white Democrats are also deeply concerned about it.
Call it the wakeness gap.
Too often progressives spend their time standing up for the perpetrators of crimes, their victims be damned.
After breaking into her home to find the speaker, DePape attacked her 82-year-old husband and fractured Paul’s skull with a hammer.
White Democrats are increasingly part of an overqualified coastal elite, living in swanky neighborhoods far from places where crime is rampant, where their professional two-income households in increasingly economically and racially segregated areas in America’s most expensive cities drive real estate values drive up.
Meanwhile, they condemn their working-class neighbors to living in enclaves increasingly ruled by violent crime — while polishing their elite credentials by supporting movements like Defund the Police that make their neighbors even more unsafe.
It is only an insult to injury that so much of this progressive posturing is done in the name of racial justice.
And when faced with a choice between working-class minorities and upper-class white progressives, it is clear which of their constituencies the Democratic politicians have chosen.
As working-class liberals struggle with crime and paying the bills, their party increasingly speaks to elites whose biggest concerns are abortion and climate change.
Another Gallup poll found that Republican voters are most motivated by the economy, immigration and crime — all concerns for lower-income Americans who live in more dangerous neighborhoods with lower-paying jobs and are threatened by migrant workers.
Meanwhile, Democratic voters are most concerned about abortion, climate change and gun policy; They want to decriminalize the illegal possession of a handgun, but god forbid anyone keeps a hunting rifle in their home!
This may end up looking like a political split, but it’s not: it’s about class.
One party is increasingly addressing the working class, while the other party only speaks to its privileged elites, who make their careers policing the language of others and calling one another racists when they fail to abolish prisons and police support.
Instead of heeding the concerns of desperate Americans across the country, the Democrats and their allies have expended immense energy in the media downplaying crime.
A year ago, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez cited concerns about headline-driven crime hysteria.
“We’re seeing these headlines about percentage increases,” Ocasio-Cortez said during a virtual town hall in July. “Now I want to say that any amount of damage is unacceptable and too much, but I also want to make sure this isn’t causing hysteria and that we put these numbers in context.”
New York City Mayor Eric Adams (above), for example, berated the false “perception” of rising crime on the subway.
The congresswoman provided the template Democrats and the media have been turning to ever since: Ignore your constituents and portray their concerns as conservative media-created hysteria.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams, for example, berated the false “perception” of rising crime on the subway.
“We average less than six crimes a day on a subway system with 3.5 million passengers,” Adams told CNN’s Chris Wallace. “But if you base your story on narrative, you’ll look at the worst of these six crimes and make the front pages of your newspaper every day.”
“I can’t stress enough the extent to which horrifying surveillance footage of black people committing violent crimes has become a quasi-permanent wallpaper on Fox these days,” MSNBC host Chris Hayes tweeted in October.
One wonders why Hayes only sees the perpetrators – but never the victims of violent crime, who are also predominantly black.
Democrats have a chance to look into their souls a little after the horrific attack on Paul Pelosi, having now flexed the muscles needed to feel for the victims of horrific acts of violence – long atrophied on the left.
It is hoped they will learn to extend it to poor and black working-class Americans whose voices they covet.
They also deserve some compassion.