How Joe Biden Ended the Donald Trump Crime Wave
Spoiler: He did it by trolling. A lot of trolling.
Happy Friday everyone. This is a quick Jackal (Quackal) before we take a break for Juneteenth. I’ll touch on a few different things and then get into Should-Reads.
As a preliminary matter, I will say that because I’m writing this on Thursday (evening), it is possible that the Donald Trump immunity decision will come down today. If that happens, you will get a separate Jackal on it. Relatedly, it looks like - based on the opinions already handed down by SCOTUS - the immunity case is either going to be written by Amy Coney Barrett or John Roberts. That could be wrong, but that’s where I’d put my money. And if you want poker odds (because that is how my brain thinks 92% of the time): ACB or Roberts having the opinion is like having pocket jacks pre-flop.
Talk to us about crime, Batman.
I think the nationwide, precipitous drop in crime has been an overlooked story in media. Earlier this week, the F.B.I. released their latest crime statistics, and they were basically like this:
Violent crime in the U.S. saw a double-digit decline in the first few months of 2024, continuing a steady drop that has been happening since Joe Biden took office.1 It’s kind of wild, since huge chunks of the American public apparently haven’t heard about it. But there really was a significant spike in crime in 2020, and it has fallen dramatically to an almost 50-year low.
Of course, I am doing a little bit of trolling. While the numbers are all correct, I think it’s debatable that Biden himself deserves the credit. Part of the reason (I think) that crime rates have fallen by a ton since the 1980s is the re-emergence of the city as the destination for people to live. When white flight happened in the 1950s and 1960s, crime increased simply because city populations went down. Likewise, when people left cities in 2020 to go live in their rural dream homes, there were fewer eyeballs in downtown areas, which inevitably makes (bad) people feel like it is OK to do more criming.2 This helps explain why rural areas saw an even more pronounced escalation in violent crime during the pandemic: With even fewer people around those areas, the bad guys got more cavalier.
With a return to the office and a slight erosion in work-from-home culture, downtowns are filling up again and crime is going down. However, I do think Biden can make an argument that he deserves credit. His legislative agenda did increase funding towards police departments, which allowed them to hire more officers and put cops on the streets.
Is it a convincing argument? I’m not sure, but it is objectively true that crime has decreased while Biden has been President. I am highlighting this because it goes back to an argument I have made before, that Biden has had a successful presidency when you look at provable facts.
The good news has continued to pile up for him lately: The jobs report from last month was pretty bonkers, and beat even the most optimistic expectations. Inflation came in at exactly 0.0% month-to-month, which has increased the chances of a rate cut right before the election.
Noah Smith has also made a positive case for Biden. Money quote:
Trump talked a big game about bringing manufacturing back to America, but his signature initiative — the tariffs — didn’t make any headway in terms of reshoring. Trump’s attempt to harangue American companies into no longer shipping jobs overseas, and his bungled attempt to get Foxconn to build a factory in rural Wisconsin, were even less effective. There was no perceptible increase in factory construction, manufacturing output, or employment.
Then came Biden. With a pair of landmark bills — the (somewhat misnamed) Inflation Reduction Act and the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act — he enacted America’s first real systematic manufacturing-oriented industrial policy since at least the early 1990s, and possibly since World War 2. A massive factory construction boom began almost immediately after the bills were signed:
I have said this before, but if you want the U.S. President to do things differently than Joe Biden, then he is not the guy for you and you should vote for someone else. But if you say he has been a disaster, you are being dishonest with yourself and should stop lying to your fragile and wonderful soul. The stock market is up, job creation is off the charts, and GDP has been stronger under Biden than it was under Trump. There is no coherent argument that says Biden has been a disaster for America.
All of this is why there was a minor freakout when 538 released their model for predicting the election and it showed this:
This will likely change as the election goes on, but it was a shocker for lots of people. And I know what you all are thinking: 538’s model is based on polls, and the Jackal is now fully skeptical of polls and I think the data guys are naturally pre-disposed to say the polls are OK, when it is clear something is off. However, this largely syncs up with an argument I have made for months: If the economy is strong and performing well, the incumbent usually wins the election. In reality, 2024 could actually be pretty boring and run-of-the-mill.
That said, both candidates would be the oldest president ever, and one of them tried to do a coup the last time he was in office. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯3
Should-reads:
This is wild. The U.S. ran an anti-vaccination operation in China. If you read last week’s Jackal, you’ll know that China does the same thing here. But it still sucks.
This goes back to what I was saying last week: “I don’t think most American citizens really viscerally understand how much of the content they see on social platforms is actually a foreign intelligence operation.” Read the thread and then read the piece. Wild.
Also related to last week: Consumption of conservative media has plummeted since 2020. A small(ish) market is competing for a smaller and smaller portion of the people who consume news, leading to more extremism.
Last week the New York Times published a fun op-ed on the origins of COVID-19, by Dr. Alina Chan. She is super smart, but it has since received a lot of pushback, with the news side of the paper pretty much laying out why a lab leak is unlikely. I will say two things:
I still think my (I promise) last piece on COVID holds up really well. Essentially nothing has changed, and the more evidence we get, the more it suggests a natural origin at the market. Again (and this is the gist of my piece): The intelligence agencies generally agree that it was a natural origin and not a lab leak. The scientific community overwhelmingly says it was a natural origin and not a lab leak. If you disagree, what are they missing?
This is a great podcast that addresses the article, and - I want to be clear - flatly debunks a lot of Dr. Chan’s claims. Quick, unsurprising summary: Some of the things she says in her op-ed are objectively false, but others that they take issue with are pretty borderline (at least I think so) and they come across as overly harsh.
I’ll also add this: I have training as a copy editor, which does involve some light fact-checking (depends on your organization, but this is generally true). I am not sure how some of Dr. Chan’s claims made it past The New York Times’ copy editor, because they would not have made it past me. To wit, she says near the top of her piece that “bat coronavirus spillover to humans is rare.” To be charitable to Dr. Chan, that is deceptive. To be slightly less than charitable, that is a bad faith lie; bat coronavirus spillover to humans is very common. There are other issues with the piece outlined in the podcast, which is a fun listen. I will end with this (which will be my COVID Forever Quote™): We will never know what happened with 100% certainty, so be nice to Dr. Chan and to the podcast people even if you disagree with them. It is also incredibly low-stakes, at this point: What would materially change about our conversation surrounding COVID if either scenario were proven beyond a reasonable doubt? I’d venture to guess that nothing would change at all. We’d all agree that it sucked super hard.
I wanted to do a piece on Trump’s appeal possibilities in his New York case, and Lawfare went and did it. Spoiler: His options are not great. Double spoiler: It is 4,200 words, so don’t start it on the toilet.
That is it from me this week. Like I said, if the immunity decision dropped today, you will get something from me this weekend. If not, you won’t hear from me until June 28th. Of course, if SCOTUS drops the immunity decision next week, then I’ll try to put something together. Have a great weekend, a happy Juneteenth, and a smashing Father’s Day, my beautiful babies.
P.S. I timed this to come out at 4:30 P.M. Eastern Time, which would allow my New York/Eastern Time beautiful babies to read this on their commute home. Colorado is better than New York, but I am always thinking of you.
There were a few issues with reporting on the early numbers from the post-pandemic period, but those have been ironed out. This post explains it well. There is a more technical one here.
This is all significantly tied into red-lining, integration of schools, and other issues, which is centered around racism, but that’s a longer conversation.
The shrug Internet thingy has now been replaced by emoji, but I’m holding on.
Great work