It’s interesting to watch videos like this. I have to admit that back in 1993 I was not paying much attention to US politics nor the Crime Bill. As I understand it, though, there were indeed problems with escalating crime fueled by crack cocaine at the time and a consensus emerged that something needed to be done both in terms of providing treatment/rehabilitation along with restoring law & order. The Crime Bill was an effort to address those problems.
Back then crime was of the kind where murders in New York didn't make the papers unless there was something sensational about them because there were on average 3-4 murders a day.
Go watch early Law and Order re-runs and realize the idea that these guys had a new case every week wasn't weird.
Crack wasn't really driving the crime wave (but wasn't helping obviously) and wasn't worse than powder cocaine (although proving that took some time).
Everyone wanted to deal with the problem, and the Crime Bill was a big, messy omnibus of previous bills and new ideas thrown in a blender and put together as a compromise. Nobody thought everything in the bill was everything they wanted, but it was a classic case of "everybody gets some of the ideas they want" in it.
" We want this many billions for local incentives to build prisons."
" How about we give you half of that and we get a ban on assault rifles"
Lots of stuff like that. The crime wave it was put together to deal with faded and a lot of the things that were in it which probably weren't great ideas to begin with were fucking horrible ideas in a lower crime world. So over the years people have been taking it apart bit by bit. (That includes taking apart good bits like the Violence against women act and stricter gun control.)
What was interesting to me in the vid were Biden’s repeated efforts to distance himself, the Dems, and Bill Clinton from the Far Left who had developed a reputation for being “soft on crime” and wasting money on rehabilitation efforts that did not seem to produce much in the way of good results. At that point in time, it seems like the Far Left had made themselves politically radioactive- now they’re making a comeback 30 years later but Bernie can’t finish the job...I weep for Butler1000.
That's exactly what went on. You can make an argument that the far left ideas never actually fell as out of favour as the conservative Democrats thought, but you have to remember that the Democrats had been fucking pasted in elections for 20 years at that point. They passed the civil rights bill and immediately started losing. They only one in 76 because Nixon had resigned and even then ran the most conservative nominee possible in Jimmy Carter. Reagan came in and they got DESTROYED '80 and '84.
1980 - Reagan wins the popular vote by just under 10 points and the electoral college
489-49
1984 - Reagan wins the popular vote by over 18 points (!!!) and the electoral college
525-13
Think about that. Then George HW Bush becomes the first vice president to follow on and win the election - the first time a party won three times in a row since 1940 (it hasn't happened since).
Bush isn't nearly as charismatic as Reagan. He only wins by about 8 points and 426-111
The Democrats looked at three elections of not even keeping the GOP under 400 electoral votes and said "fuck it" and moved to the right. This was the era where using the term "Liberal" was so toxic that people began to call themselves "progressives"
Every complaint Butler1000 makes about the Democrats is rooted in this era and was sort of true in this era. The DLC was the group leading this "third way" approach and winning with Clinton was their proof they were correct. Of course, over time things changed, the crime wave fell, the economy shifted as the computer age started and the country as a whole and the Democrats in particular started to drift back leftwards. The DLC dissolved in 2011. The most conservative Democrat today is far to the left of the most conservative Democrat of 2010 even. The ideological sorting that began in the civil rights era was pretty much complete and the Democratic coalition isn't what it was.
Unfortunately, for a lot of people that was a formative political experience and they can't let go of the past. Just like Trump still thinks New York is the New York of the late 70s to early 90s and the crime wave is still going on, Butler1000 and those types think the Democrats are still the Democrats of the 1980s-2010s and the DLC is still in charge.