There’s a critical midterm election coming up, and Joe Biden and his fellow open-borders, soft-on-crime, revolving-door Democrats now want you to believe they’re actually focused on crime.

In fact, the only thing they’re focused on is reelection.

It’s the oldest trick in the Demo playbook: Govern like spendthrift leftists, then race back to the sensible center just before the upcoming election. As the Wall Street Journal editorial board notes:

Democrats are playing defense on crime, and on Thursday President Biden sent in the political SWAT team in the form of more federal spending for police. Question: Has he chatted with George Soros and the soft-on-crime local district attorneys the billionaire has helped elect?

Mr. Biden previously proposed $37 billion for policing and crime prevention in his 2023 budget. That includes nearly $13 billion to hire and train some 100,000 officers. “We need to fund police who walk the beat, know the neighborhood, are accountable to those they are sworn to serve, and build community trust and safety,” says a fact sheet about the Biden plan.

Where was all this tough talk two years ago, when Democrats across the board stood meekly by, staring at their shoes while Black Lives Matter and antifa thugs engaged in a nationwide orgy of violence? Indeed, some of those Democrats, like then-presidential candidate Kamala Harris, actually urged the rioters on:

They’re not gonna stop. They’re not gonna stop. This is a movement, I’m telling you. They’re not gonna stop. And everyone beware. Because they’re not gonna stop. They’re not gonna stop before election day in November, and they’re not gonna stop after election day. And everyone should take note of that. … They’re not gonna let up, and they should not. And we should not.

If you missed it: “They’re not gonna let up, and they should not.”

For the cops, for the folks in crime-ravaged communities, and for the Starbucks employees in certain big cities, this about-face will likely be too little, too late. As the Journal continues: “The Police Executive Research Forum surveyed nearly 200 police departments and reports that in 2020-2021 there was a 45% increase in the retirement rate and 18% increase in the resignation rate versus a year earlier. More than 500 officers left the New York Police Department last month alone, and police union chief Patrick Lynch told the New York Post that ‘the exodus has become a stampede.’”

Said one cop in the beleaguered city of Portland, Oregon, which also happens to be home to antifa: “The only differences between the [Portland Police Bureau] and the Titanic? Deck chairs and a band.”

Last month, the hard-left city of San Francisco actually ousted its even-harder-left District Attorney Chesa Boudin. And, as Just the News reports, “Left-wing prosecutors in Democrat-run cities from Los Angeles to Philadelphia are facing growing backlash for soft-on-crime policies as violent crime spikes devastate local communities.”

As Just the News continues: “Many of these progressive prosecutors are funded by left-wing megadonor George Soros, who has spent the last several years injecting tens of millions of dollars into local DA races nationwide, backing candidates who support policies such as abolishing bail, defunding the police, and decriminalizing or deprioritizing certain offenses.”

In addition to rampant street crime, there’s another plague that is killing American cities: illegal immigration. It’s gotten so bad, in fact, that big-city Democrat mayors are begging the Biden administration for help in dealing with his massive release of illegals to cities all across the country.

Good luck with that, folks.

And come November 8, just remember whose policies put you in this awful predicament.