The White House to the left: We told you so on crime

The defeat of a liberal Portland prosecutor at the hands of a tough-on-crime challenger has hardened a view among top White House officials that Democrats need to further distance themselves from their left flank on law-and-order issues.

In the wake of the voter backlash over public safety in Oregon, Joe Biden’s aides this week argued the results served as validation of their long-running concerns that crime and an immigration crisis at the southern border risk overwhelming the president’s case for reelection — especially if the broader party is seen as soft on both fronts.

“Particularly right now, Americans don’t want to feel like things are out of control,” said one Biden official, who was granted anonymity to offer candid views about tensions within the party. “Well-meaning ideas have gone too far, and we need a sensible approach.”

The White House is banking on the idea that voters will reward them for public efforts to crack down on immigration and boost spending on law enforcement — and, perhaps as importantly, that the liberal forces that so effectively moved the party away from those planks in 2020 won’t punish the president come November.

Inside the West Wing, senior counselor Steve Ricchetti has been among the leading voices making this case, while also advocating for more toughness on the border, according to the Biden official and one other, both granted anonymity to discuss private conversations.

But the president has not needed much convincing, the officials said, having personally favored an approach that emphasizes more traditional support for law enforcement alongside criminal justice reforms. Biden spent much of his half century in politics as an ardent advocate for law enforcement and anti-crime measures, a reputation that complicated his path to the 2020 Democratic nomination amid scrutiny over his role in passing a controversial 1994 crime bill.

And even as the broader party shifted leftward on issues like police funding and immigration during that period, Biden sought to stake out a middle ground that often put him out of step with his progressive base — perhaps most notably using his first State of the Union address in 2022 to exhort lawmakers to “fund the police.”

In recent months, Biden has warned advisers that scenes of chaos at the border or crime in cities pose an increasing political danger. They risk turning off the independent and suburban voters, he’s said, who may be repulsed by much of Donald Trump’s policies and personality but could be willing to vote for him anyway in the name of public safety.

The emphasis has angered some Democrats, including lawmakers who believe that the president’s approach on immigration will establish a border-enforcement-only posture as the starting ground for any type of legislative compromise. Black lawmakers have similarly warned that Biden’s tough-on-crime rhetoric risks harming people of color. It has not gone unnoticed by progressives that much of the sharpening of Biden's rhetoric has taken place after they lost a powerful ally in the West Wing when former chief of staff Ron Klain departed.

But Biden and his senior-most aides are united on the need to push for greater border security. And elsewhere in the party, the tack to the middle has been welcomed. And the ouster in Portland’s Multnomah County of district attorney Mike Schmidt, one of a wave of progressive reformers swept into office following the 2020 murder of George Floyd, is proof itself of where the political winds are pointed.

“We just always have to be focused on quality of life issues,” said Rep. Susie Lee (D-Nev.). “And if people don't feel safe in their community, we’d better respond to that.”

White House officials contend that Biden isn’t just making rhetorical adjustments but has substantive accomplishments to run on, too, pointing to statistics showing steep drops in murder rates across the country. On an issue where Republicans historically enjoy a sizable advantage, Biden aides said, Democrats for once have a story to tell.

“The narrative about Democrats on crime became deeply distorted after Defund the Police became kind of a thing,” said Matt Bennett, executive vice president for public affairs at the center-left think tank Third Way. “In fact, [Biden] has been very aggressive about funding the police, and has flipped around that narrative in ways that I think are really helpful.”

Still, it’s one that has yet to resonate with the public, with polls showing voters still unsatisfied with the White House’s handling of both crime and the southern border. Turning those perceptions around is a tough task, Democrats said, especially in a modern media environment that often skews toward amplifying episodes of chaos and unrest.

“Crime and immigration, they’re very visual things. All we see is crime and murders and shit on the local news,” said one Democrat close to the White House, factors that contribute to the broader sense of post-pandemic unease many Biden allies believe is dragging down the president’s approval ratings.

Biden advisers insist there is still time to make inroads with Americans on both fronts, and that even minor gains could prove critical in a tight presidential race. The February special election of Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.), who ran on strengthening border security and law enforcement, has reinforced the belief their message can break through.

“President Biden is leading with values that unite the American people across partisan and ideological lines, and which are delivering results, including the lowest violent crime rate in almost 50 years,” White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said in a statement, noting that the drop was “a reversal of the spiking violent crime rate he inherited.”

The White House, to that end, has battered Republicans in recent days over their abandonment of a bipartisan border security bill that would’ve imposed strict new limits on immigration.

The legislation, which Senate Democrats are forcing a vote on for the second time this week, has fueled blowback among progressive and Latino lawmakers who blasted its “extreme and unworkable enforcement-only policies.”

But Biden has fully embraced the measure, repeatedly emphasizing the tough restrictions it’d put in place and criticizing Republicans for stalling the bill solely to avoid handing him an election-year victory. The White House is also preparing an executive order on immigration as a fallback, in a long-germinating display of his commitment to a border crackdown.

The president has also made a point of voicing support for law enforcement in recent weeks. He refused to criticize police conducting mass arrests of pro-Palestinian protesters on college campuses, even as he backed the right to peacefully protest. And he’s repeatedly touted a plan to invest $37 billion in crime provision — a proposal that has little shot at being taken up in Congress, but that officials have used aggressively to counter GOP attacks on crime. Big city mayors have taken notice.

"Democrats are smart to take the more practical approach now," said New York City Mayor Eric Adams. "And that does not mean we have to abandon our principles, just that we must remember our roots: working people who just want their families to be safe and have a high quality of life.”

Adams’ election in 2021 was treated, at the time, as an early indication of a Democratic voter course correction on the issue of crime. But for at least the next six months, Democrats across the spectrum appear largely willing to accept this trend, even if some on the left oppose Biden’s individual policies. Crime is indeed down from a year ago, and the strain at the border has eased for now, alleviating some of the pressure Democrats typically face in an election year.

There is also deep-seated fear throughout the party of the alternative: A Trump presidency that has made clear it would prioritize mass deportations and sharp shifts away from the progress Biden has made on other criminal justice issues like gun violence prevention.

“In some cases, progressives are suffering setbacks because people are frustrated in those particular locales with notions of policy. In some cases, progressives are winning,” said Paul Maslin, a longtime Democratic pollster. “But the truth is, we need both our bases and the middle, and we don’t have the luxury of picking one or the other.”

Nick Reisman and Nick Wu contributed to this report.