“Dollar General Obama” Strikes Out Again

No, I cannot take credit for creating this very apt nickname for House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-NY. Some savvy person in the social media world did, and full credit to them for their cleverness. However, it fits so well that it’s positively inspirational for writing about this man who fancies himself as the #1 Democrat and Trump basher-in-chief these days.

Looking at Jeffries, you can see an eerie resemblance to the former president. He even sounds like him in speech – similar tone, cadence, and the condescension that Obama brought with his every utterance, leaving no doubt whom he believed the smartest man in the room was. The problem for Jeffries is, the Obama schtick which worked well for the former president isn’t working so well for the minority leader. My, how times have changed – and Jeffries along with most of the rest of his party have yet to acknowledge that.

Jeffries was one of the first Dems to pounce on President Trump’s decision to federalize the law enforcement function in Washington DC, claiming with a straight face that crime in our nation’s capital has actually decreased recently, so what’s the big deal? Just another power grab by Trump the wannabe dictator, right? Let’s see.

Looking at murder rates in DC for the last 10 years or so (the worst crime, after all), you can see a spike upward in 2020 which was not surprising given the nationwide George Floyd riots and the general increase in crimes that year. However, during the Biden years, except for a slight drop in 2022, murders in DC continued upward with a significant spike in 2023 (source: DC metropolitan police). Granted, from that 2023 spike the rate has eased downward in both 2024 and again so far this year, but it’s still close to the 2020 level. So, measuring these decreases as some kind of success story when the rate in 2023 was exceptionally high, is like what the Dems did to minimize the impact of inflation once the worst spikes upward had occurred. To put a finer point on this, according to the murder statistics there have been 99 murders to date in DC this year versus 112 at this time last year. An improvement, yes, but a rather modest one.

And the murder rate tells only part of the story. Property crimes in DC sometimes involve violence or threats, with carjacking as the main culprit for this. And, as it happens, there was a significant spike upward in carjackings in 2023. Again, as with murders, the carjackings have decreased substantially in 2024 and this year thus far, compared to 2023. But, since police still reported 36 carjackings in June of this year and another 16 in July, is this something the residents DC are expected to accept as a fact of life? Overall, according to the DC police, there have been 14,093 property crimes reported this year compared to 14,734 at this time in 2024. Again, a decrease but a pretty modest one. Reported motor vehicle thefts are about 2,900 for both this and last year at this time. 

The above statistics point to a metro area that doesn’t feel very safe these days. Even reporters on broadcast networks (ABC for example) took off their propaganda hats long enough to mention that they or people they knew were either victimized or threatened recently in DC before help arrived. As one who grew up near Detroit, a city that has carried a bad reputation for many years (sometimes justified), I’m well aware that there is a built-in fear factor to living in a place where crime is a constant threat every time you leave home. 

What Hakeem Jeffries and other Dems choose to ignore is the many years, especially starting with 2020, that major crimes have become a way of life in the nation’s capital. And many other less significant crimes are not reported by a populace that realizes the police are overwhelmed with crime-fighting and have nothing left to spare in investigating run-of-the-mill burglaries and other less-than-major crimes. Even DC Mayor Muriel Bowser has acknowledged that her police force is simply not adequately staffed to keep up with the crime rate, despite the recent decreases since the peak year of 2023. Maybe that’s why Minority Leader Jeffries’ claims, along with most of his other over-the-top anti-Trump rants, ring hollow to the public these days.