Just in time, before the November midterm elections hit, former White House press secretary Jen Psaki has moved on to greener pastures at NBC News.  On Sunday, while chewing the political fat with her new colleague, "Meet the Press" host Chuck Todd, the former Biden flack gamely admitted that if the battle to retain Congressional control “is a referendum on the president,” Democrats “will lose, and they know that.”  The steely spin master even conceded that the issue of crime is a key “vulnerability.”  Fortunately, Psaki is no longer officially required to defend against such vulnerabilities.  That Herculean task now falls to her successor behind the podium, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.

On Monday, when confronted by Psaki’s candid analysis, Jean-Pierre was left to deflect the obvious.  Asked if the president believes America’s big cities are safe, the White House official spluttered, “It is not a yes or no question.”  In fact, big city murder rates remain 30% above 2019 pre-pandemic levels.  Every day, another horror story hits the front pages of a Manhattan subway rider being brutally attacked by a psychotic vagrant or a peaceful pedestrian gunned down in a Philadelphia suburb.  In San Francisco, a real estate developer who was mugged outside of home warns that crime in the City by the Bay has reached a tipping point from which it may never recover.  Democrats are trying mightily to recover from the disastrous slogan, “Defund the police.”