Some of us who are fortunate enough not to live in San Francisco have spent part of the past two years or so munching on popcorn while watching the meltdown taking place in the City by the Bay since the voters decided to install radical leftist Chesa Boudin as their new District Attorney in November of 2019. Boudin had made no secret of his intentions to promote an agenda of defunding or abolishing the police and refusing to prosecute many forms of crime. So nobody in the city really had the right to act shocked when he did precisely that. The entirely predictable results have been disastrous for San Francisco’s residents and even the liberal Democrats who run the city eventually grew dismayed at the way the city’s chief prosecutor was turning the criminal justice system into a very unfunny joke. Now the entire situation has clearly become too much for many of them to bear and a group promising to correct the situation has gathered far more than enough signatures to move forward with a recall election. The really amazing part of this story is that the people behind it are almost entirely Democrats. (ABC News 7, San Francisco)

San Francisco Department of Elections officials said Tuesday the department has certified a petition that seeks to recall San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin, election officials said.

The special election to recall Boudin will take place on June 7, 2022, during the statewide primary election…

Two former prosecutors with the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office, former Assistant District Attorney Brooke Jenkins and former prosecutor Don du Bain, have joined the recall effort.

Safer SF Without Boudin has said the recall effort is Democratic-led.

The group is named Safer SF Without Boudin, and in their promotional material they point to significant incidents of muggings, robberies, and carjackings, among other forms of both violent and property crimes. Boudin’s refusal to hold criminals accountable has fostered an atmosphere of chaos and even leaders in his own party and former, high-ranking Democratic prosecutors are calling for his head.

The group needed to round up 30,000 signatures to put the measure on the ballot during the primary election next June. They quickly obtained 83,487, which should easily be enough to overcome any challenges to the signatures that arrive during processing. And you can rest assured, at least according to the group’s founders, that many of those signatures came from Democrats. That’s not hard to believe because I’m honestly not sure there are 30,000 Republicans living in that liberal stronghold.

This may come as a hopeful sign to residents of other deep-blue cities that have similarly suffered under crime waves after their elected leaders fell under the spell of the “abolish the police” movement. Perhaps… just possibly… there is a bridge too far for even the most progressive liberals. And Chesa Boudin could be providing the blueprint of how to reach that point.

Keep in mind that even before being sworn into office, Boudin vowed to stop all prosecutions of “quality of life” crimes such as prostitution and urinating or defecating on the streets. Pretty much on day one, he fired some of the city’s most experienced prosecutors, replacing them with people who were more adverse to “bothering” criminals by locking them up. He next set up a task force assigned to find ways to prevent illegal aliens – even those convicted of crimes – from being jailed or deported, warning the police not to harass them because he wouldn’t prosecute them anyway.

By the end of this summer, the property crime situation in San Francisco had reached the point where burglaries seemed to just be part of the new normal. The San Francisco Chronicle went so far as to publish a think piece asking if perhaps residents should just tolerate robberies as part of the price of living in a progressive society and concentrate more on investing in better security systems for their homes. By last month, even some of Boudin’s fellow progressive prosecutors had declared the city a “sinking ship,” resigned their positions, and joined the recall effort.

So is that really what it takes for these progressive communities to finally wake up and smell the coffee burning? Do all of the cities experiencing this woke madness truly have to sink to the point where residents are literally in fear for their lives every time they step outside their homes before they reject this insanity? San Francisco may show us the answer to those questions next June. But if they do, who will step up to replace Boudin and restore order the way Eric Adams is trying to do that in New York? San Francisco isn’t about to suddenly experience a red wave and start electing Republicans. That means that they will need to find some pro-law and order Democrats to run for higher office. And that may be a very tall order to fill.