CAN LIBERALS SURVIVE PROGRESSIVISM?

In Waukesha, Wis., six people were killed and at least 60 injured when Darrell Brooks drove his Ford Escape through a Christmas parade, according to the police. Brooks already had a lengthy rap sheet and had reportedly run over a woman with the same S.U.V. early this month. But, as The Times reported, he had been “quickly freed from jail on bond after prosecutors requested what they now say was an inappropriately low bail.”

What happened in Waukesha on Sunday is among the consequences of easy bail. And bail reform — that is, reducing or eliminating cash bail for a variety of offenses — has been a cause of the left for years. . . .

This is not social science. It’s common sense. It’s the basis on which the United States was able to make its streets far safer from around 1995 to 2015, when crime rates kept going down — above all to the benefit of the very minority communities that progressives claim to champion.

The Democratic Party has since thrown that legacy away. Joe Biden disavowed his 1994 crime bill. Last year’s protests often devolved into naked criminality, to which many progressives, including those in the news media, closed their eyes, notoriously including those “fiery but mostly peaceful protests” in Kenosha, Wis. Opportunities for thoughtful police and justice-system reform were squandered in the rush to defame, defund, diminish or abolish.

Yep. Right after George Floyd’s death, we looked like we had a national consensus on the need for criminal justice reform. The left immediately proceeded to do things that — predictably — made sure that wouldn’t happen. If you assume that people usually intend the natural and predictable consequences of their actions, what does that tell us about the left’s commitment to criminal justice reform?

Flashback: House Dems Unanimously Block Resolution Condemning Violence and Rioting. “House Democrats unanimously blocked a resolution condemning acts of violence and rioting—including the ‘deliberate targeting of law enforcement officers’—in the wake of George Floyd’s death.”