Democrats eyeing the presidency have raised their voices to denounce the death penalty, a departure from their predecessors who were wary of appearing weak on crime. President Barack Obama never called for getting rid of the death penalty, and Hillary Clinton, Al Gore and Bill Clinton all supported keeping it. Today’s Democratic presidential hopefuls, by contrast, say the punishment is morally wrong and is applied with racial bias. This shift in position comes as support for the death penalty has fallen from 80 percent in the 1990s to about 50 percent today. But still, some argue Democrats are walking a tightrope by trying to take a position on capital punishment, which is “despised by the party’s progressive base but is far more popular in the crime-and-order Heartland,” Bill Whalen, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, wrote in a recent column.
Political Cornflakes: Unlike their predecessors, this batch of Democratic presidential hopefuls have taken a hard line against the death penalty
