Democrats are abandoning liberal criminal justice reforms as their voters signal they no longer want officials to loosen laws in the name of racial justice.

The latest sign of that shift came Thursday when President Joe Biden said he won't oppose an effort in Congress to undo a liberal crime law put in place recently by the Washington, D.C. , City Council.

But evidence of the change in attitude within the party has become increasingly apparent, with a spike in crime over the past two years effectively smothering Democrats’ efforts to overhaul law enforcement and criminal justice.

“The president's decision to sign the congressional bill to override the D.C. crime law is certainly a signal that attempts to reduce sentences for violent offenders is a nonstarter even among Democrats,” Brad Bannon, a Democratic strategist, told the Washington Examiner.

“But the Democratic desire to prevent police murders of victims like Tyre Nichols, George Floyd, and Tamir Rice is very much alive,” Bannon added. “This effort will intensify after the next tragic instance of police violence.”

Biden said he would sign a bill overriding the D.C. City Council’s crime law after 173 House Democrats had already voted against it weeks earlier.

That move left some Democrats feeling betrayed, given that the White House had previously indicated Biden opposed the measure, and by following that lead, some Democratic lawmakers had opened themselves up to attacks.

“So, a lot of us who are allies voted no in order to support what the White House wanted. And now, we are being hung out to dry,” one House Democrat told the Hill.

The recognition that a vote to leave the D.C. bill intact had left some Democrats in a difficult position reflects the new consensus on crime within the party, at least on Capitol Hill.

Virtually all Democrats who spoke out against the effort to overrule the D.C. crime law did so in the context of defending the city’s right to govern itself; almost no Democrats defended the substance of the law itself, which lightens sentences for offenses such as carjacking and eliminates mandatory minimum sentences.

The national Democratic Party has so far proved more willing to rebuke liberal activists on criminal justice reform than local Democrats. In a reflection of how effectively Republicans wielded the issue of crime during the midterm elections last year, all but the most progressive Democrats in Congress have struck a tougher tone in recent months when discussing crime and policing than they did when the issue burst into the mainstream in 2020.

Local Democrats, such as the 12 on the D.C. Council who voted to overrule the mayor’s veto and push through the crime law, have sometimes proved slower to embrace their voters’ new opposition to progressive reforms.

In Chicago this week, voters denied Mayor Lori Lightfoot a spot in the mayoral runoff election in large part over her embrace of a liberal brand of politics that critics blamed for her inability to get Chicago crime under control.

San Francisco voters recalled their liberal district attorney, Chesa Boudin, last year after his ban on prosecuting many low-level offenses preceded a spike in crime. And several other DAs and mayors, including in Seattle, Atlanta, and Baltimore, have either lost reelection bids or declined not to seek another term against the backdrop of voter angst.

Some of the pro-reform liberals who remain in office at the city level have found themselves at odds with fellow Democrats over their progressive stances as the party moves away from them.

In Manhattan, for example, district attorney Alvin Bragg drew criticism from New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, also a Democrat, as she ran for reelection and found Bragg’s progressive policies a liability in her race.

Hochul’s opponent, former GOP Rep. Lee Zeldin, erased her lead in polls during the contest’s final weeks in large part because even Democratic voters embraced his message about getting tougher on crime.

In Philadelphia, district attorney Larry Krasner, one of the most liberal DAs in the country, has clashed with Democratic Mayor Jim Kenney over the former’s refusal to prosecute many crimes, including violent ones.

Police reform, which Democrats have often advocated in conjunction with broader criminal justice reform, was as recently as 2021 a top priority for the White House.

While Biden mentioned police reform legislation during his State of the Union address last week, the issue has largely vanished from Democratic talking points despite a brief resurgence in the wake of the murder of Tyre Nichols by police in Memphis, Tennessee.

And the ideas of limiting pretrial detention, scrapping sentencing requirements, and ending the prosecution of so-called quality-of-life crimes, such as disorderly conduct and public urination, warrant barely a mention these days from national Democrats.

Crime statistics tell much of the story about why the party has made such a dramatic pivot on public safety.

D.C. has experienced 95 carjackings so far this year, according to the city’s police department .

The city averaged 13 carjackings a month from 2018 through the beginning of the pandemic; in the month of January, D.C. saw 57 carjackings.

In Chicago, sky-high crime has driven residents and businesses out of the city at alarming rates.

Tyson Foods, Boeing, Caterpillar, and Citadel all shuttered their Chicago offices last year. Executives at some companies that remain in the city, including the CEO of Mcdonald's, have criticized the city for its failure to control crime.