The Hidden Politics of Disorder
About this episode
Ezra Klein opens with a paradox: by 2023 violent crime was near its lowest level in over 50 years, yet 77 percent of Americans believed crime was rising — a feeling he heard constantly in San Francisco and now hears in New York. Democrats feel the politics of it: the party that ran on criminal justice reform in 2020 now has Kamala Harris campaigning as California's top law enforcement official, with lifelong Democratic voters leaning Republican on crime alone. Klein argues the data is missing something, and that something is disorder. He is joined by Charles Fain Lehman, a Manhattan Institute fellow who studies crime and drug policy, to discuss why visible disorder shapes people's sense of safety more than crime statistics do, why telling voters to just look at the numbers fails, and what Democrats misunderstand about the politics of public safety.