Washington (AP) – Democrat Eric McWilliams does not agree that Donald Trump sends National Garde troops like Washington, DC, and he certainly does not support most of the president.
But the 63-year-old veteran in the retired craftsman and the US Navy praise Trump for one thing. “When it comes to crimes,” he said, “he is fine. He is pretty well. How he does it is another thing.”
“Crime is a big problem,” he continued. “At least he does something.”
According to a recently carried out, the views of McWilliams reflect the thinking of a lot of democrats. It is determined that although the most disapproved thing about how Trump deals with the problem, a immense majority of 68%sees as a “main problem” in big cities. This despite the fact that the statistics show crime across the country, with some cities reporting 30-year-old deep stalls.
The results underline the challenge for democratic leaders. You have to initiate the needle between the criticism of Trump’s guidelines that are deeply unpopularly below your base, and at the same time dismiss not widespread concerns about security that are reinforced in many news sources and in online forums such as Facebook and the popular NextDoor app.
This could create a vulnerability for the party that occurs in the interim elections of the next year.
Trump urges the Democrats to get involved in one topic
Where he has the upper hand
While Trump remains unpopular as a whole, the novel survey has determined that his approach to crime has brought him high grades compared to other topics such as business and immigration. About half of US -growing, 53%, say that they agree to the handling of crimes.
The huge majority of Americans, 81%, also see the crime in big cities as a “big problem”. This includes almost all Republicans, about three quarters of the independent and almost 7 out of 10 Democrats.
However, the problem is complicated, even for those who are concerned. In interviews, the participants showed the alarm to expose the Trump’s unprecedented takeover of Washington, and the threat to expand its efforts to other cities.
They believe that resources would invest better to invest in police work, to invest psychiatric services and to say goodbye to meaningful laws to bring weapons from the city’s streets.
However, many also complained about the state of public security in the country, even if they said they felt secure in their own neighborhoods and recognized that violent crime sinks from pandemic after a spike. Some found that they or their neighbors had been victims of earnest crimes and complained about what they were for a penniless reaction from the police.
Brian Cornelia, 62, a retired foreman and lifelong democrat, who lives in Michigan near Marquette, is dissatisfied with the performance of both parties.
“The police were crazy,” he said. “Now with Trump what he does, that’s crazy too.”
He said that the crime is “not at all” a problem in which he lives and “down” everywhere, but it still appreciates that Trump does something.
“Something happens. We’ll see if it helps or not, but it is better than anything to do,” he said. In any case, he said Trump secured Democrats in a corner.
“It’s bad. How will you say that you don’t want crime to be treated?” he said. “If you argue with him, what, you are so gentle on crimes? It’s a hook-22.”
Criticism of Trump’s tactics
Even those who give Trump loan question his tactics.
About 8 out of 10 Democrats say that the president is “completely” or “something” unacceptable to fulfill control of local police stations, as he did in Washington. And about 6 out of 10 say that it is unacceptable for the federal government to apply the US military and national guard to support the local police.
“I do not agree that national troops that have authority for other Americans,” said McWilliams, the veteran of the navy. “You should not use our armed forces to patrol our own people. This transforms it into an authoritarian state.”
McWilliams, who lives in White Hall, Pennsylvania, said that crimes in his neighborhood “practically do not exist”, where he doesn’t even close his door. But he is worried about the situation in the nearby Allentown and across the country and noticed the fatal mass shootings this week in a church in Minneapolis.
“I am glad that he wants to fight crimes because – now, no one else does it, certainly not our mayors, governors and police department,” he said, accusing them of being “too politically correct” in order to pursue controversial tactics such as “Stop and Frisk”, which he believes that it works.
Others are far more skeptical.
“I think he’s just terrible,” said Carolyn Perry, 79, a lifelong democrat and retired nurse who lives in Philadelphia and sees Trump’s actions as an excuse for democratic cities that voted against him.
“I think this national guard is ridiculous,” she said. “It’s almost like war law. And now they go around with weapons.”
The 59 -year -old democrat star Kaye, who lives near Los Angeles in Downey, California, agreed and excluded Trump for the apply of the military against the residents -something that she said was partly against him.
“Of course I understand concerns about crimes in a big city,” she said. “But I don’t think an authoritarian game book is the right way to repair it.”
If the president really wanted to tackle the problem, he would invest in the local police departments instead of steering the resources to enforce immigration. She sees the procedure in the context of a broader effort to strengthen the opportunities of the Republicans in the intermediate elections of the next year.
“I think he will want to have troops on the street to intimidate people, not to choose,” she said.
Democrats try to find their own message
Part of the challenge for Democrats is that the crime of historically was not an crucial problem for their basis.
Gallup surveys in April showed that only about a third of the Democrats said that they were worried about “a lot” about crime and violence and were more concerned about the economy, social security, the environment, hunger and homelessness.
Crime was traditionally also a stronger topic for Republicans, including the 2024 elections.
The Democrats recognized the gap at a national party in Minneapolis last week. In a presentation in front of the members of the Democratic National Committee, party strategists found that Republicans have recently issued about three times as much for advertisements related to criminal ads in the latest presidential years.
They asked the Democrats not to imitate the rhetoricians of “strong crime” for decades, but rather to position themselves as “serious security and not empty fear tactics”.
“Don’t take Trump’s crime bait – browse into solutions to prevent crime, react to crisis and stop violence,” they urged in a presentation of the film.
Some democratic politicians have tried to do exactly that.
This includes JB Pritzker, the governor of Illinois, who pushes back against Trump’s threats to expand his efforts to Chicago. He defended the approach of the Democrats and said the local efforts to combat crimes worked.
“We are also hard in the crime,” said Pritzker in an interview in an interview on Wednesday. Trump, he said, “speaks a good game.”
“However, what the president did, it is more difficult to hold the crime,” he said.
___ Colvin reported from New York. Sophia Tireen in Chicago and Steve Pecle in Minneapolis contributed to the reporting.
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The AP-NORC survey of 1,182 adults was carried out from August 21 to 25 using a sample from the probability base of the Norc base Amerispeak, which is designed as representative of the US population. The sales edge for adults in total is plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.
