If Pope Leo can’t be soft on crime, who can be?

The first pope to hail from the United States has been vocal in his opposition to certain actions and policies carried out by Donald Trump’s administration. He’s maligned the Republican focus on mass deportations, calling on governments around the world to “welcome the stranger” during his Christmas homily. In recent weeks, Leo has been extremely critical of the U.S. war on Iran, including on Thursday, when he took aim at “a handful of tyrants” ravaging the world with war. During Palm Sunday Mass, he said that “God does not accept the prayers of those who choose violence.”

Trump fired back on April 11, accusing the pontiff of not taking a hard-enough stance on thieves, penitent or otherwise, by using a standard-issue Republican political attack — that liberals are too soft on crime. In the satire-defying way that is unique to Trump, he touted his political record and the performance of the stock market to rebuke the pope. 

“I’m doing exactly what I was elected, IN A LANDSLIDE, to do, setting Record Low Numbers in Crime, and creating the Greatest Stock Market in History,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “If I wasn’t in the White House, Leo wouldn’t be in the Vatican. Unfortunately, Leo’s Weak on Crime, Weak on Nuclear Weapons, does not sit well with me.”

The pope has led millions in a prayer that explicitly asks God to wipe their record clean of all trespasses. His predecessor, Pope Francis, made a point of washing the feet of prison inmates to emphasize his status as a servant of the church for all people, even criminals. So if anybody was going to be “weak on crime,” it was definitely going to be Leo. That Trump feels comfortable leveling such an attack against the pope speaks to the embarrassing orthodoxy in American politics, where forgiveness is inherently seen as weak.

As part of its long, semi-permanent campaign to peel off the few remaining centrist Republicans, the Democratic Party has positioned itself as just as pro-punishment as the GOP. The GOP, led by Ronald Reagan, found success throughout the 1980s by focusing on law and order. George H.W. Bush successfully painted Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis as soft on crime on the way to winning the White House in 1988. Having spent more than a decade outside the Oval Office, Democrats looked to toughen up their image and run a candidate in 1992 that could be just as punitive as the next neocon. Enter Bill Clinton.

The pro-death penalty governor of Arkansas campaigned on promises to put 100,000 more police officers on the streets of American cities and to impose harsher sentences on repeat offenders. It’s impossible to suss out what portion of the electorate voted for him based on that promise over, say, the notably dire state of the economy in 1992. But Clinton made good on his campaign trail rhetoric just a few years later when he signed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act — spearheaded by then-Delaware Sen. Joe Biden — in 1994. The Democratic Party stuck with what worked in 1996, promising “more police on the streets and tougher penalties on the books” in their party platform. The supposed opposition to the GOP offered much of the same rhetoric around crime and punishment, arguing that juvenile violent offenders should be tried as adults and touting Clinton’s role in getting a federal “three strikes” law on the books.

The hope then was to wrench the law and order mantle away from Republicans for good, and while it appeared to have worked in the short-term — Clinton was reelected by a healthy margin over his GOP challenger, Sen. Robert Dole — the ploy didn’t work in the long-term. Democrats kept moving to the right on punishment (while prison populations exploded), which set up stark divisions and fierce debates on law enforcement and sentencing within the party that have still not been resolved. After several decades of crime trending downward and nationwide protests on the state of policing, some Democrats briefly softened their stance on crime. But it was short-lived. And all the while, Republicans never stopped painting them as bleeding hearts and tagging them in campaigns as soft on crime. 

Take Kamala Harris’ 2024 presidential campaign. Despite the Democrats running a literal prosecutor, whose policies as San Francisco’s district attorney and then California’s attorney general got her dubbed “Copmala” by progressive voices, Harris was still dinged as “soft on crime” by Donald Trump and his surrogates.

Want more sharp takes on politics? Sign up for our free newsletter, Standing Room Only, written by Amanda Marcotte, now also a weekly show on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

In this environment, Trump’s overreaction to the pope’s chiding makes more sense. With neither party offering an alternative to policies of mass incarceration, recognizing the humanity of those convicted of crimes seems outlandish — and offering them a path to redemption seems downright heretical.

Heading into the November midterms, Democrats have once again taken a hard-line stance on crime. Moderates in New Mexico, Louisiana and Nevada have pitched a return to the ‘90s tough-on-crime talk, trying to win back voters and refute the right-wing conception of Democratic strongholds as lawless. Between the nation’s two major political parties, there appears to be no room in American politics for a belief like Leo’s — that all people can seek and find forgiveness. 

The shift to the right has left reformers and abolitionists in the party without a political home. With almost no major Democrats arguing for policies that might reduce the prison population or allow people to avoid jail time altogether, the bog-standard biblical talk about compassion can look like namby-pamby submission to crime run amok. 

But that’s letting Republicans set the boundaries of the discussion. Democrats looking to swell their ranks would do well to take a lesson from a church whose numbers are rapidly rising, and take a bold stance on justice that focuses less on punishment and more on redemption.