San Francisco takes a step toward sanity in recalling its anti-police prosecutor

Former San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin

Liberal policies on “defunding the police” and “ending the prison pipeline” via “decarceration” may sound good to liberal voters in wealthy suburbs that don’t suffer from serious crime, but in major urban areas all over America — including a key center for America’s liberalism, San Francisco — liberal voters who elected liberal prosecutors are finding out the hard way why not only red states but also deep blue cities need prosecutors and police.

Voters this week in San Francisco went to the polls and recalled San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin by a margin of nearly 20 percentage points, with 59.5 percent of voters wanting him out. The initiative to Recall DA Chesa Boudin: Vote YES on H sounds like something that might be happening in Texas or some other conservative state.

It’s not.

Quoting National Review:

“In December, San Francisco’s Democratic mayor London Breed called for more ‘aggressive’ policing in the city, noting the brazen smash-and-grab robberies that made headlines last winter as well as the vehicle break-ins and regular drug dealing in the city’s Tenderloin district. ‘It’s time the reign of criminals who are destroying our city, it is time for it to come to an end,’ Breed said at a press conference. ‘And it comes to an end when we take the steps to be more aggressive with law enforcement. More aggressive with the changes in our policies and less tolerant of all the bulls*** that has destroyed our city.’”

When Democrats are talking that way about other Democrats, it’s got to be bad.

It’s not just conservative media. Here’s what The Atlantic wrote after Tuesday’s election:

“Boudin’s downfall and other cultural battles in the city involving education, homelessness, and criminal justice have been closely watched around the nation. Historically speaking, this is no surprise. San Francisco has long functioned as a vehicle for the country’s hopes and fears. In its early days, it was considered a jewel of American expansionism; for the Beats, an outpost of hedonic freedom; an example of ’60s society gone wrong, according to Joan Didion; and in the 2010s, the global center of tech innovation. Mark Twain mocked the city’s…