House Democratic Leader Sides With Biden, Not His Caucus, on Crime Bill

Collin Anderson of the Washington Free Beacon writes about an interesting political choice from the U.S. House Democratic leader.

House Democrats are “rip roarin’ pissed” at President Joe Biden after he flipped his stance to support a Republican bill blocking changes to Washington, D.C.’s criminal code. That didn’t stop the Democrats’ new leader, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.), from defending Biden’s about-face.

Asked during a Sunday CNN interview if Biden “pulled the rug out from under House Democrats” when he revealed he’d sign the Republican bill, Jeffries opted to side with the president, saying, “Not at all.” The answer puts Jeffries at odds with his members, many of whom attacked Biden for flip-flopping on the legislation, which would block D.C. from lowering penalties for carjackings, illegal gun possession, and other crimes. Biden signaled his opposition to the bill in a February statement — prompting at least 14 vulnerable House Democrats to vote against it—only to reverse his position weeks after the vote.

Now, those vulnerable members will almost certainly be subject to soft-on-crime attack ads from Republicans, a fate they could have avoided had Biden relayed his position before the vote. “People are rip roarin’ pissed,” one House Democrat told Axios. Biden “is going to have a much harder time asking people to take tough votes after this.”

Biden used his eventual support for the Republican bill to portray himself as tough on crime, a tactic that comes as Republicans across the country hammer him for rising violent crime rates. Biden’s desire to beat back those attacks apparently outweighed his longstanding support for D.C. statehood and home rule, which would allow the city to pass laws without congressional input. During his 2020 campaign, Biden said he’s supported D.C. statehood “for the last 28 years,” and the Democrat’s administration a year later urged Congress to “provide for a swift and orderly transition to statehood.” “This taxation without representation and denial of self-governance,” the administration wrote at the time, “is an affront to the democratic values on which our nation was founded.”