Democrats' post-mortems after this election were already exhausting last Wednesday, and they've only continued for the last nine days. And on networks like CNN, they have had to hammer home the reasons why Dems lost so terribly, in terms of losing control of the House and Senate.
Of course, all of this slips into hyperbole very quickly, no matter how close the presidential election actually was.
Trump won the popular vote, yes, but his margins in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan were miniscule — at last count, 30,000 votes in Wisconsin, which is less than half the capacity of Levi's Stadium; 70,000 votes in PA, which is about Levi's capacity; and 80,000 votes in Michigan. It's kind of tragic when you imagine that the votes of just those 180,000 people could mean the difference between us having a catastrophic second Trump term with a kangaroo cabinet of dipshit loyalists and nutjobs, and having a sane or even possibly inspiring next four years. And it was just the whims of those 180,000 people that the entire news media is using to create the narrative of the country's rightward shift. (Along with a few House races.)
The balance of power in the Senate hinged on two seats and the resignation of Joe Manchin; the balance in the House is going to hinge on maybe five, same as it was, with the Democrats so far flipping almost as many seats as the Republicans did.
In other words, the story of the country's rightward shift is a bit overblown.
Still, polls show that even among Democrats, crime has become a central concern, and Republicans like Donald Trump, through force of repitition, have convinced a whole lot of voters that liberal policies and liberal cities are to blame, even while crime — especially violent crime — escalates in very Red places across the country, like Tennessee, Missouri, and Alabama.
Thus we have this latest CNN segment that aired Wednesday, in which Erin Burnett adopts the narrative that liberal cities across the country are shifting rightward, and it's all because of crime and a shift toward a law-and-order mentality.
And who does she bring on to talk about this, but newly elected Mayor-elect Daniel Lurie, with the clear aim to paint outgoing Mayor London Breed as somehow more liberal and soft on crime.
Lurie tries to portray himself as being about "common sense," saying "we don't think of ourselves as progressive, moderate, or conservative here in San Francisco," meaning, I guess, him and his team.
"We have to make sure that we have a fully staffed police department," Lurie says. "We have to get our behavioral health and drug crisis under control in our city... I don't believe that's a rightward swing. That's a common sense approach."
Clearly without knowing too much about San Francisco politics, Burnett plows into the interview with Lurie, calling Breed "one of the most prominent progressive Democrats in the country," and saying, "part of the reason [Breed] fell out of favor with voters … was, sure, rising crime, but slashing the police budget."
Burnett seems to believe the police budget has been slashed and that there is a "growing number of homeless tents" in San Francisco, though neither of those things is objectively true. Breed publicized a 60% drop in tents on the street last month, and as the Chronicle re-explains today, Breed actually diverted more funds toward the police department in recent years.
Breed's Dream Keeper initiative, when introduced in the wake of the George Floyd protests of 2020, was intended to divert some SFPD funding toward the city’s shrinking Black community, however that never actually occurred. And, the Chronicle notes, the SFPD's $822 million budget is about 30% higher than it was when Breed took office more than five years ago.
To boot: Breed was the only mayoral candidate endorsed by the San Francisco Police Officers Association. That's a detail that doesn't fit very conveniently into CNN's narrative of why Breed wasn't elected.
Not to mention the fact that this also was no landslide for Lurie. With about 19,000 ballots left to tally, Lurie only leads Breed in first-choice votes by less than 9,000. He's still winning out in the ranked-choice contest, however, by about 10 points. (Only about 14,000 fewer San Franciscans, 85,300 in total at the current count, cast first-choice votes for the progressive candidate Aaron Peskin, compared to Lurie's 99,000.)
So, as the media continues their self-flaggelation and Democrat flaggelation and essentially kowtows to the great and mighty Trump machine for the next month or two, let's just call it like it is with these numbers. Were there dissatisfied voters in many parts of the country? Yes. Is San Francisco suddenly shifting to the right along with New York and Chicago? Not quite.
