I take no position between Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama, so please don’t read this as favoring one candidate over another.  It is, however, intended as a slam on the Democratic Party, lest anyone think otherwise.  It is not an endorsement of any other political party, mind you, but then at least the Republicans know what they stand for, regardless of whether it’s good or bad.

Via Volokh, we have Hillary’s stand on crime from the New York Times :

“Violent crime is on the rise again in America,” Clinton said. “There were 392 murders in Philadelphia last year, that’s an average of more than one a day, every single day.” [Ed.Note: Appreciate the math help, Hillary. That could have slipped right past most people.]

Clinton said the cost of her crime agenda was around $4 billion per year in new investments, which would be funded from savings from reducing corporate subsidies.

The plan foresees reinvigorating a 1990s police recruiting program known as “COPS” and would invest $1 billion a year to “close the revolving door” of prison inmates reverting to crime on release and going back behind bars.

She pledged reforming probation and drug policies so that non-violent drug offenders would be given a chance to get treatment and avoid jail if they stay clean.

Revolving door?  Now where have I heard that before?  Hey, Mike Dukakis, does that sound at all familiar to you?

There must be some rule in the presidential candidate playbook that requires them to announce a plan to put 100,000 more cops on the street.  Crime works.  Fear works.  People afraid of crime vote.  Forget whether putting the cash into education or healthcare would work better, they have to prove that they are tough on crime.  Or else.

The economy did very well under Bill Clinton.  But most of his judicial appointments would have made Ronald Reagan blush.  There’s no talk of personal freedom or civil rights or due process.  That would be loser talk.  That would be, dare I say it, liberal. 

Clinton adds the obligatory drug treatment proviso, because that’s in vogue.  But even her way of suggesting it smacks of too little, too late, too full of crap.  Whenever the words “non-violent drug offenders” is used, it smacks of being that little group of addicts who fall into the category of “harmless, good people who made a little mistake” that somehow manages to include a total of about 12 people.  Real defendants in the real world never seem to fit into the classification of criminals that the public loves and wants to help.  They live dirty, unpleasant lives that just don’t seem to evoke middle-class sympathy.

While there are other issues that may satisfactorily distinguish one party from another, it’s not criminal justice.  We lose in the ‘tough-on-crime” game no matter who gets the nod, and candidates of all flavors will trip all over each other to prove that they can protect us from the evil criminals. 

Wake me up when we get a candidate that stands for due process and wants to spend more on education than cops.