The Democrats’ Platform: Justice Only for the Criminals

The newly-minted Platform adopted by the Democratic National Committee at the Philadelphia convention includes a section on criminal justice.

What it does not include is any mention of crime, of victims or the war on cops.

To the Democrats enjoying their week in Philadelphia, the only victims are the criminals; the only criminal justice is the justice received by the criminals; and the only crime is that committed against the criminals after they are arrested, prosecuted and imprisoned. If this bit of wisdom wasn’t written by members of Black Lives Matter, they certainly had their fingers in it. In fact, we should be pleased to know that the Democrats are going to end “institutional and systematic racism” in our society. As part of that battle, the Democrats are going to “push for a societal transformation to make it clear that black lives matter and that there is no place for racism in our country.”

Just this past Monday, while Democrats were getting ready to release their platform, the Major Cities Chiefs Association released a survey that murders in the largest 29 cities in the US rose by 15 percent in the first six months of 2016. Added to the large increases of the past two years, the murder rate in those cities is out of control – and the last time we checked, Philadelphia, home to the Democrat convention, and Chicago, hometown of both President and Mrs. Obama and Candidate Hillary Clinton, were major cities.

In Chicago, 316 people have been murdered so far this year, compared to 211 in the same period last year. Of those, it is estimated that more than 90 percent are young black men. To the Democrats, apparently those black lives don’t matter.

Imagine if 316 people in Chicago had died in the past six months from drinking city water. Or in train crashes on the CTA, or in explosions in factories. That might have made the Democrat Platform. But not murders of young blacks.

Nor does the Democrat platform make any mention of the “war on police” and the fact that 32 police officers have been shot and killed while on duty so far this year – up 88 percent over last year. Apparently law enforcement has considerably less influence with Democrats than Black Lives Matter.

Instead, the platform’s lead sentence – apparently the most important – states “Democrats are committed to reforming our criminal justice system and ending mass incarceration.” It then states that “we will rebuild the bonds of trust between law enforcement and the communities they serve.”

This, issued the day before the mother of Michael Brown – the Ferguson “gentle giant” killed by police while he was trying to take Officer Darren Wilson’s handgun away from him – spoke to the convention, as one of several other mothers of “unarmed, innocent police victims,” about police brutality.

So that they leave no stone unturned, the platform goes on to say that the Democrats will end racial profiling, will close down more prisons, make prosecution of police officers more transparent, further relax marijuana laws, end the death penalty and address the racist criminal justice system by treating minority offenders more fairly.

Even in criminal justice, the Democrats want more federal regulation: the platform calls for the creation of national guidelines for the appropriate use of force. If they have their way, in other words, expect hundreds of pages of regulation which a police officer would need to review before using force, even against a felon pointing a gun at him. A sure way of “rebuilding the bonds of trust between law enforcement and the communities they serve,” something else the platform promises to do.

The platform even tries to legitimize Virginia Governor and Hillary Clinton’s best friend Terry McAuliffe’s attempt to restore voting rights to 200,000 felons – shut down by the Virginia Supreme Court last week. Democrats need those votes.

We should not be surprised. The Platform exactly reflects the liberal narrative. The Democratic Party is dominated by liberals who don’t like to believe that any of the good people in the world could ever commit crimes, and if crimes are committed it is because the unfair and racist American culture has mistreated people so badly that they just could not help themselves. The response, they believe, should be to give the offender more tender loving care, a job perhaps, or at least more government services.

It is easy to dismiss party platforms as irrelevant documents that are written to satisfy various constituents and voting blocs. But platforms do reflect the position on issues and the values of the party faithful, and although they are usually ignored by voters and others, it is estimated that party officials, legislators and party leaders adhere to the language of the platform 70 to 80 percent of the time.

Not good news for the police, not good news for crime victims, and not much good news for the rest of America.