The Black Lives Matter movement, using the springboard of George Floyd's self-induced drug death while in police custody, managed to convince innumerable Democrats that our criminal justice system was too mean to criminals.  So, in November 2020, Angelenos elected George Gascón, and, in November 2019, San Franciscans elected Chesa Boudin (who filled the seat Gascón vacated when he headed to L.A.), at least one of whom got funding help from George Soros.  Now both are facing recall votes with strong citizen support.

The thing about Gascón and Boudin is that, unlike Biden, who pretended to be "normal" and moderate, Gascón and Boudin made no bones about their hard-left approach to managing prosecutions in the left coast's two major cities.  (And yes, most other cities are bigger than San Francisco, but it's still one of the most recognizable cities in the world, which gives it cachet.)  Citizens in those Democrat enclaves elected them anyway.

When Gascón was the San Francisco D.A., he pushed to end cash bail, which was followed by a huge increase in property crimes.  Gascón helped author Prop. 47, which reduced many crimes from felonies to misdemeanors.  While it did indeed reduce the number of African-Americans arrested for felonies, it did not reduce the number of crimes committed across California.  In fact, the opposite happened.  

With that record, it was pretty clear what Gascón would do to Los Angeles if he got elected.  Still, after a whole bunch of wealthy San Francisco Bay Area leftists poured money into his campaign (although Soros outspent them all), Los Angeles citizens, undoubtedly gripped in the emotional fallout from George Floyd's self-induced death, voted Gascón into office.

Since then, they've paid the price for that bit of stupidity.  Gascón announced an across-the-board refusal to seek cash bail for certain offenses; released many who were currently in jail because they couldn't pay bail; re-evaluated all sentences for which prisoners had already served 20 years, no matter the crime; refused to seek the death penalty, no matter the crime; and refused to charge any juveniles as adults — again, no matter the crime.

It was that last that garnered the most press.  In 2014, when he was two weeks away from turning 18, James Tubbs molested an 8-year-old girl.  He was finally arrested at age 26.  The bearded Tubbs promptly announced he was a woman named Hannah.  Gascón insisted that Tubbs be tried as a juvenile female.  Thanks to Gascón's new rules, the 26-year-old male Tubbs will spend two years in a juvenile facility for girls.

Even the prosecutors working under Gascón are agitating against him, and, in February, a recall movement began.  This effort, the second attempt, may be the one that works.  According to the organizers, not only have they raised $3.5 million, but they've already collected 125,000 signatures of the 566,857 they need by July 6 to get his recall on the ballot.

Image: George Gascón and Chesa Boudin.

Things are no better in San Francisco for Chesa Boudin, a man descended from a long line of Marxists.  His parents were members of the militant leftist Weather Underground and were convicted of felony murder.  Boudin's mother, Kathy Boudin, paroled in 2003, promptly became a professor at Columbia, which helps explain why America's colleges and universities are insane and need to lose all federal funding.  His father, David Gilbert, just got out of jail in November and apparently hasn't yet landed a university gig.  Boudin was then raised by Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, also academics and Obama's buddies.

So again, voters knew what they were getting with Boudin: the complete abandonment of criminal justice.  Just as Gascón did, Boudin announced all sorts of policies that would make it harder to prosecute criminals.  Consistent with leftist principles, he did away with cash bail and, instead, has prosecutors decide how risky the person arrested was.  And again, like all leftist prosecutors, Boudin routinely released repeat offenders.  On his watch, crimes have shot up.

He's also just bad at his job.  Judges have expressed dismay over how the D.A.'s office was run because of constant turnover, missed deadlines, the failure to turn over exculpatory evidence, and other carelessness.  And when the inevitable recall campaign began, two of his former prosecutors joined it.  As with Gascón, the first recall didn't make it to the ballot, but a second effort succeeded, with Boudin's recall coming for a vote in June.

Just as Gascón's foes are optimistic, so are Boudin's — especially because of a newly released poll showing that 68% of San Francisco voters support recalling Boudin, 74% think badly of him, and 61% believe he "is responsible for rising crime rates in San Francisco, especially burglaries and thefts."

The poll was commissioned by recall organizers, but they used a reputable Bay Area polling company.  This election is also coming on the heels of the election removing radical activists from the San Francisco School Board.  All this suggests that even San Francisco's famously leftist citizens have reached their tipping point.

It's to be hoped that thoughtless Democrats who like to virtue-signal will have learned their lessons from the disastrous reign of leftists in federal and state offices, but, sadly, I doubt it.