On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” CNN Political Contributor and Scholar at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics Paul Begala stated that while there is a crime issue in red states and rural and suburban America as well, he wants “a Democrat to stand up and say, you know, some people belong in jail.” And that it’s those who Democrats “supposedly care about who are victims of crime here.”
After reading from a Los Angeles Times article about crime problems in Portland, host Bill Maher asked, “This is a big Achilles’ heel for the Democrats is it not?”
Begala responded, “They need to get out in front of it. They need to — I want a Democrat to stand up and say, you know, some people belong in jail. … And by the way — and it’s not the 10-year-old girl in Indiana who got raped and needed to have an abortion to save her life. That’s who they want to put in jail on the other side.”
He added, “Democrats, first off, they do have a story to tell, Bakersfield, CA hometown of Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), voted for Trump, Republican mayor, much higher murder rate than Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) San Francisco, why aren’t Democrats talking about that? If this — Third Way is a think tank, they did a study, even if you take the cities out, the seven states with the highest murder rate, all Trump states. The 25 states that went for Trump have a 40% higher murder rate than the states that went for Biden. In other words, the crime problem is in rural America too and it’s in suburban America. And I do think — look, I think the left doesn’t want to hear and the right doesn’t want to hear that we need more cops and fewer guns. Better training, better screening, we will never tolerate police brutality, but those are the two things, some on the left don’t want to hear it either.”
Begala concluded, “For Democrats and my fellow liberals, it’s the people we supposedly care about who are victims of crime here. Elon Musk is not going to get his stupid Tesla carjacked, right? It’s poor people, it’s working people, they’re the victims of crime. And by the way, if you look at all of the polling and the voting, it’s those folks who are voting for more security, more safety, more and better cops, and it’s the white liberals who want to defund the police. It’s not actually the heart of the Democratic Party.”
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