caveats exist.
I think it was David French, the Republican who was urged by various neo-con figures of anti-Trump vintage (Bill Kristol comes to mind) to run for President in 2016, who chimed in with an op ed wondering “why are the democrats” in the debates “running against the successes” of the last two Democratic presidents? And as they try to settle into some meaning on health care and immigration, you land on the one big controversy… The Crime Bill of the Clinton first term.
Easy enough for David French, given that it was essentially a Republican “get tough on crime” bill… with some measures like “Midnight Basketball” that the Republicans running for Congress in 1994 run on mercilessly. (That itself a program promoted under Bush I’s “Thousand Points of Light”.)
What I found interesting was his admission that “but now tweakings can be made to let some people out of prison”… a nod against mass incarceration… an admission of gray.
Now turn to this Charles Blow op ed and we have this statement…
It was the way he advocated for the 1994 crime bill, a bill that contributed to America’s surging mass incarceration, which disproportionately affected black and brown people in this country.
The bill did some good, but the harm it did cannot be overlooked or understated. Rather than fully owning up to to the disastrous aspects of the bill, Biden has over the years bragged about it and defended it.
I suppose I shouldn’t dip into the argument as “an admission”, because it is a problem with political argument that nuance gets obliterated — make an argument for the other side of the argument and you end up losing the argument by some “Even you say”, a bad tendency in politics I wish there were a way to obliterate
— and clearly Charles Blow is against the bill and its effects whereas French is (I suppose) for the bill …
… but with those caveats. Which is just a little… interesting(?).