Why unions can’t moderate Democrats on crime
Conn Carroll
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Democrats avoided electoral disaster in 2022 thanks to one topic: abortion. On every other matter important to voters — the economy, immigration, and crime — Democrats trailed Republicans by double digits.
It is possible that Democrats will be able to rely on abortion to keep them competitive for years to come. But it is also possible that as the shock of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision fades, and as more states settle the issue at the ballot box, the matter will lose salience, even with the strongest constituency of the modern Democratic Party, unmarried women.
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And if abortion does decline in importance for voters, what will Democrats do then? Democratic strategist Ruy Teixeira, author of the 2002 bestselling book The Emerging Democratic Majority, has a new book out titled Where Have All the Democrats Gone, looking at why the enduring Democratic governing coalition predicted in 2002 never materialized.
In short, Teixeira argues that the cultural Left, led in no small part by college-educated unmarried women, has driven the Democratic Party far to the left on crime, immigration, environment, and gender ideology.
Teixeira hopes that unions, in particular, can push back against the cultural Left leaders of the Democratic Party, moderating the party’s stances on some of these matters. But as the Wall Street Journal highlighted on Tuesday, that is going to be difficult.
Democratically controlled states and cities have passed social justice legislation that lowers the penalties for many crimes, including theft. As a direct result, this has led to a huge increase in theft, which has caused a particular problem for retailers.
Retailers want to prevent theft from their stores very much, but they are sensitive about starring in the next viral video featuring some supposedly disadvantaged thief being detained violently by store security or the police. So, for many retailers, this has meant it just makes more sense to let the thieves go and not report the crime.
But this has only further emboldened shoplifters. The National Retail Federation’s 2023 Retail Security Survey reports, “Eighty-eight percent of retailers report that shoplifters (overall) are somewhat more or much more aggressive and violent compared with one year ago. And those that specifically track the number of violent shoplifting incidents reported that they saw their number of shoplifting events involving violence increase by over one-third (35%) on average.”
And for large retailers like Macy’s, it is often union employees who suffer the brunt of this violence. United Food and Commercial Workers Local 3000 of Seattle even walked out this Black Friday to protest the treatment of Liisa Luick, who was suspended by Macy’s without pay for three weeks, all for the crime of calling 911 on a repeat shoplifting offender.
“We aren’t getting the support we need to feel safe at work,” Luick wrote. “I’ve been left alone trying to manage crowds of customers for long hours without a break. The employees in my store also frequently observe shoplifting and even occasional violence.”
Luick’s frustration with Macy’s is understandable but misplaced. Macy’s isn’t the one that made it a misdemeanor to steal anything less than $750. The Democratic Party led by the cultural Left did that. Luick and her union’s real beef is with a Democratic Party that has created an environment in which unaccountable criminals thrive.
Luick’s union should be working with her employer to elect Republicans who will get tough on crime. Or if that is too hard a pill to swallow, they should at least be primarying soft-on-crime Democrats.
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But, of course, that is not what modern labor unions are about. Except for police and fire unions, the modern labor movement has been completely overtaken by the cultural Left. From crime to immigration and energy policy, unions no longer fight for policies that would benefit their members, such as less low-skilled immigration and cheaper energy production.
Until that changes, until unions begin to take on the cultural Left, Democrats will continue to be a party completely dependent on abortion.