The Democrats Have a Crime Problem. Blame the Media.

At a fundamental level, I agree with Klein. He’s right that we cannot fact-check our way out of a fear of crime; I’ve said this myself. As a quant type, I find it depressing to admit, but politics are about vibes, and vibes cannot be fact-checked. This is especially true when it comes to crime, where fear is often a reflection of deeper anxieties about noncrime disorder, about outside threats, about social upheaval and change. Fact-checks that say (very true) things like, “We are in the midst of a historic drop in homicides” can’t really address those deeper currents.

But on another, equally fundamental level, I disagree with what the New York Times journalist, influential podcaster, and longtime wonk is saying. Because the vibes are coming from somewhere. And for most people, the vibes about crime are not coming from their lived experiences. Crime is not like inflation, a phenomenon everyone experiences because everyone buys stuff. Instead, crime is densely concentrated geographically and among certain people, in the areas that suffer the most from poverty, unemployment, and government disinvestment. When a prominent journalist on a widely popular podcast tells listeners to “talk to some people who live near you,” the people he’s referring to are probably not going to be those living in the areas where crime is most common—they are, rather, going to be those whose lives are least likely to be affected by crime.

It is among this group that, in Klein’s telling, “the fury is overwhelming.” But where does the fury fueling the bad vibes come from? From the media. From a media that routinely misrepresents crime and tends to ignore the voices of those actually affected by the policies: bail reform, reform prosecution, policing alternatives, and so on.