Hillary Clinton and Krazy Kat Hochul need to get on the same page concerning crime.
Is it real, as Clinton seems to believe? Or is it, as Hochul has contended, an overblown campaign distraction — promoted by “master manipulators” and “data deniers” to derail her bid to become New York’s first elected female governor?
Sisterly solidarity was the order of the day at Barnard College Thursday — with Hillary and Hochul standing shoulder-to-shoulder before a cheering, fully committed array of feminism-centric true believers.
It was one of those late-campaign events where the hype is thick, where the rhetoric is hyperbolic and where the facts don’t really matter. How very odd, then, that Hillary let the truth peek through.
Oh, for sure, the partisan newspeak was there — darkly threatening Republicans hide behind every tree in Hillaryland, and have for decades. But suddenly she slipped.
“They don’t care about keeping you safe,” she said — they being GOP candidate Lee Zeldin and his party mates. “They want to keep you scared.”
But safe from what? Frightened of whom? Crime? And criminals? Seems so.
But didn’t Hochul, just last Sunday, tell MSNBC’s Al Sharpton that crime isn’t real? Never mind New York’s shocking body count, its bloody subway platforms, its insane penal codes and its cadre of woke district attorneys — the real problem is GOP disinformation.
Republicans, she said, “are master manipulators. They have this conspiracy going all across America trying to convince … people that they are not safe.”
True enough, she was immediately bludgeoned into conceding that crime is “an issue,” which is not quite the same as a problem — which, in fact, vastly understates New York’s crime crisis.
Since the boneheaded penal-law “reforms” of 2019 and generally reduced policing following COVID and the George Floyd rioting, violent crime in New York’s cities has exploded.
It’s up 30% in New York City since last year — major felonies are up 10% and transit crime is up 42% over the past two years — with 24 murders.
“Master manipulators” at work here, as Krazy Kat claimed?
Hardly. The crime wave got a big boost from COVID, to be sure, but it’s mostly the work of a New York progressive cabal determined to defang the penal code because serious law enforcement inequitably targets minorities.
That’s a contention crime victims themselves, overwhelmingly minorities, likely would contest — even if Hochul buys it hook, line and drive-by shooting. So how inconvenient of Hillary to puncture her fantasy balloon.
“I see [campaign] ads about crime every 30 seconds,” she said at Barnard Thursday. “No solutions, but just a lot of really fearful, scary pictures.”
But “really fearful, scary pictures” of what, exactly? Crime scenes, of course — and thus does Hillary debunk Hochul’s no-such-thing-as-a-crime-wave deflection.
Plus this: Hillary says Republicans harp about crime — but offer, in her words, “no solutions.”
Well, now. The fact is that Zeldin has been about nothing but solutions for months now — maybe to a fault, but certainly to good effect, judging from the narrowing campaign polls.
Rolling back those noxious 2019 penal-law “reforms” — especially cashless bail — is a solution. Focusing state policy on making the streets safer through vigorous law enforcement is a solution. Putting woke DAs in their place as New York’s Constitution permits is a solution. And so on.
Again, Lee Zeldin is bubbling over with solutions — while Krazy Kat Hochul has to be hammer-locked into admitting there is even a problem.
So thanks to Hillary Clinton for injecting some reality into the Hochul campaign. People go to rallies to cheer candidates, not to hear truth — but sometimes truth emerges anyway.
And now comes news that President Joe Biden will be, um, speaking on Hochul’s behalf in Yonkers Sunday. The possibilities here are delicious, if likely a little daunting to the governor’s staff.
Because if they couldn’t trust Hillary Clinton to stay on message, imagine their angst over the damage Joe Biden’s frightening fact-mangling could do.
On such a weak hinge does Hochul’s fortune swing.
