[hunterpayne]

First I want to say the last election wasn't people electing Trump, it was people rejecting the Dems. Second, this entire argument from the left on crime is based upon a false reading of the stats. When people quote the single recidivism rate, they are misunderstanding how that rate is measured. The majority of people that go to prison for the first time, never go back again. A fraction of cons go back over and over again and that skews the recidivism rate. A large chunk of those repeat offenders have serious mental illness. Most of the rest view crime as either a job or a lifestyle.

I'm not sure the 'people for whom crime is the best option' is really the right way to look at it. The vast majority of people in West Oakland never commit any crimes. And ignoring these realities is what is driving populism. Articles like this one say a lot more about the author than they do about political science or populism.

When I say the people in that neighborhood don't watch the news, I'm not making a value judgement. I'm just stating a fact. They don't really care about politics. They do care if the police come when they call and they do care if they can walk the streets at least some part of the day safely.

If Dems really wanted to win an election, they would change policy. Until they do that, they will continue to lose elections. That's Democracy working, not some new or different politics at work.

[groby_b]

"this entire argument from the left on crime is based upon a false reading of the stats" -> Not sure whom you're debating here. I'm aware of the stats, and don't think I've made points that disagree with your view of them.

"A large chunk of those repeat offenders have serious mental illness" -> 25%. A bigger problem is substance abuse, at 52%.

Your "Most of the rest view crime as either a job or a lifestyle" and my "people for whom crime is the best option" are saying the same thing. So I'm not clear why you say you're not sure it's the right way to look at it. We both agree that there are subgroups that choose crime deliberately, and based on the stats, it's still a fairly significant group.

"And ignoring these realities is what is driving populism". -> Yes. That is exactly what the article is saying. Quote: "This gives rise to a set of views among those elites, [...] which are basically out of sync with the views of the majority". You're 100% aligned with the author here.

[hunterpayne]

The author explicitly says that punishment doesn't work. He implies heavily that only the academics and elites know this because its counter-intuitive.

My point is that what is driving populism is poor performance by the elites. The other side of this coin is regular folks noticing the bad performance while understanding (in this case correctly) the problem. The populism only happens when both of these things are happening at the same time (bad performance, and normies noticing the bad performance).

Fix the policy and the populism fades. But in this situation that is unlikely to happen because the author believes something that is just false. That's why he keeps going in circles about the wrong fixes, because he doesn't understand that he is just wrong in his understanding. Ironic no?

PS The stats you quote, are they all offenders or repeat offenders? Because that's basically the same mistake the author is making by confusing those two categories. I'm not sure that matters for you because you seem to understand policing is effective. For him, it breaks his entire analysis. I hope this explains my point. Edit: the reason why your way of looking at it isn't all that helpful is that its based in economics instead of policy. There are always rich and poor, there isn't always a big increase in crime.