How do we know that the midterms will end up catastrophic for Democrats? The post-mortems have become pre-mortems, and in particular on crime. Republicans have seized/pounced/gripped the crime issue in midterm messaging, particularly late in the 2022 cycle, as rampant crime has remained at generationally high levels ever since the Defund the Police push after the death of George Floyd in May 2020.

And … it’s working, Vox’s Li Zhou reports, because it’s firmly based in reality:

Republicans’ attacks seek to tap renewed voter fears, which follow a recent increase in murders nationwide. While violent crime has been trending downward for decades, Philadelphia was among the places that saw a significant jump in homicides — 57 percent — between 2019 to 2021, an increase that has many people here on edge. Other places including Chicago and Oklahoma City have seen similar trends as murders increased 30 percent between 2019 and 2020 at the national level.

“The surge in messaging is because of a surge in violence that’s taken place. The salience of political messaging about crime goes up when crime goes up,” says Rutgers professor Lisa Miller, who’s studied how criminal justice issues can mobilize voters.

Zhou chalks these attacks up as both “racist” and “misleading,” and complains that the GOP has “tied” Defund the Police to Democrats. Er … who else would get tied to it? Prominent Democrats endorsed that message in the spring and summer of 2020, and some in Congress still do — Cori Bush, for instance, the most recent addition to The Squad. Mark Kelly just took $350,000 from Living United for Change in Arizona, for instance, which still wants to defund the Phoenix police department.

Zhou seems most unhappy that Republicans are scoring points on crime, and spending accordingly:

Republicans’ spending, too, appears to reflect just how effective they see this line of attack being. All told, Republicans have spent $157 million on crime-related ads at the national level, compared to $105 million on the economy and inflation, according to data from the ad analysis firm AdImpact. And the breakdown is even starker in the Pennsylvania Senate race, where Republicans have spent nearly $12 million on crime ads, compared to $2.5 million on the economy and inflation.

And … so? Polls have consistently shown that voters are prioritizing inflation, the economy, and crime in their midterm decision. Republicans are at least addressing those issues, while Democrats instead are talking about abortion, climate change, “threats to democracy,” and pretty much anything except what voters care most about.

Interestingly, Stanley Greenberg approaches this more honestly at the progressive American Prospect. Not only did Democrats make a huge mistake in embracing Defund the Police, they abandoned the very real concerns of working-class and urban voters by pretending the crime issue didn’t exist. As a result, the vulnerability of Democrats on crime in this cycle “is not rocket science,” the pollster scolds, and neither is the Republican focus on it:

But crime rates in the major cities grew well into 2022. New York City has seen citywide shooting incidents increase by 13 percent compared to July 2021, and the number of murders increased for the month by 34 percent compared to this time last year. Philadelphia and Chicago experienced prominent shoot-outs on the subway, and in Philadelphia overall shootings have increased by 3 percent and violent crimes are up 7 percent.

As a result, crime was a top-tier issue in the midterm election, and that included Blacks, who ranked it almost as high as the cost of living in poll after poll. For Hispanics and Asian Americans, crime came just below the cost of living as a priority. And Republicans continued to remind voters that Democrats continued to support “defunding the police,” even by linking candidates to organizations they took money from, like Planned Parenthood, which back in 2020 called for defunding.

The Democrats had so little credibility on crime that any message I tested this year against the Republicans ended up losing us votes, even messages that voters previously liked. …

In my Labor Day survey, I tested the exact police message that I developed with the team of pollsters last year, focusing again on respecting and funding, not defunding the police, including urgent reforms. It defeated the Republican crime message by a stunning 10 points, yet we still lost a point in the margin among those who heard it.

With Democrats so out of touch on crime and the police, just discussing crime cost Democrats.

Greenberg also notes that the Democrats’ silence on the economy is costing them in this midterm election as well. When people’s pocketbooks are getting drained, that’s a higher priority than ‘racial equity,’ he argues:

THE FAILURE OF ELITES TO SEE what was happening in these communities on crime was matched by their failure to see how much the economy trumped racial inequality.

2020 was the two-decade anniversary of most Americans not seeing any pay raises, and that was even more true for African Americans and Hispanics. After the CARES Act in March of that year, Congress gridlocked on giving further pandemic relief until after the election. Not surprisingly, 35 percent of voters in exit polls said the economy was the top factor in their vote. Only 20 percent said racial equality.

In Democracy Corps’s 2020 Election Day survey, the top reason by far for supporting or considering Trump was “the strongest economy” and “getting us out of the [pandemic] recession.” The economy did not make it into the top four reasons to vote for Biden, other than preserving the Affordable Care Act.

Greenberg mostly focuses on messaging, which is natural given his role as a pollster and strategist. However, it’s even more important to note that it’s not just the messaging. Democrats have controlled Congress and the White House for 22 months, and they haven’t done diddly-squat about crime. The progressive caucus in the House has repeatedly blocked efforts to boost policing, again demonstrating their animus to law enforcement, and Biden hasn’t exactly worked very hard to get it over the line. Instead, they spent trillions of off-budget dollars that made the economic situation much worse than necessary and don’t have any policies in place to reverse the damage.

It’s not just messaging. The disconnect is also substantive. Democrats don’t want to support policing, and they don’t want to enact the supply-side policies that would help curb inflation — especially on energy. They had their shot at governing and turned it into a disaster. All the messaging in the world can’t correct for that … and Democrats won’t even bother messaging properly in the first place.