Just how callous can these clueless, heartless Democrats be!

A confession: When House Republicans announced plans for a New York hearing to showcase rampant crime, I didn’t need to curb my ­enthusiasm. 

I assumed the worst, that the hearing would bring New Yorkers bad news they already know and that Democrats and their media shills would dismiss the event as theater designed to embarrass Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. 

I was right.

The hearing, partly because of its timing, smelled like payback for Bragg’s flimsy indictment of Donald Trump, giving Dems and the media the ammunition to repeatedly ridicule it as a partisan dog-and-pony show. 

But I was also wrong in a major way: I underestimated how clueless and heartless Democrats could be about the sufferings of actual crime victims. 

My big takeaway was that they ­really don’t give a damn. 

Nadler’s unforced error 

Manhattan Rep. Jerry Nadler, for example, made the brain-dead mistake of citing declining homicide rates and decreased shootings in New York as proof that Judiciary Committee Republicans were using crime as a “pretext” to “bully the district attorney.” 

Telling grieving families that statistics say crime really isn’t so bad in New York and it’s worse elsewhere is tone-deaf.

That’s what 30 years in Washington will do to you. 

The indifference of Nadler and his fellow travelers to the witnesses’ pain and demands for justice made the hearing instructive.

As a result, the Dems snatched defeat from the jaws of victory and the hearing was more than worthwhile. 

The deniers were ice cold when warmth and compassion were called for, with Rep. Daniel Goldman offering another example of callousness.

His attempt to label the day a waste of time earned him a much-deserved scolding from the angry mother of a murder victim. 

“Don’t insult my intelligence,” Madeline Brame snapped at Goldman, an heir to the Levi Strauss fortune and a prolific stock trader whose district includes lower Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn. 

“You’re trying to insult me like I’m not aware of what’s going on here,” Brame said. 

She testified that Bragg’s office downgraded and dismissed charges against two offenders who — along with two others — brutally beat and stabbed her son, Army vet Hason Correa, to death in Harlem. 

“When Alvin Bragg came into office, he was handed a strong, trial-ready murder case,” Brame said. 

“He dismissed — completely dismissed — gang-assault and murder indictments against two of the defendants clearly on video participating in the brutal, savage slaughter of my son. Hason was kicked, punched, stomped and stabbed nine times by four individuals whom he did not know, nor had he done them any harm.” 

The only decent thing Goldman could have done was express his sorrow at her loss and promise to look into her complaint that Bragg was coddling killers. 

Lecturing her about Washington gotcha games and cutting her off midsentence was not an option, yet that’s what he did. 

Father’s searing rebuke 

Nadler got a deserved tongue-lashing from Barry Borgen, whose son was the victim of a brutal anti-Semitic attack. 

Joseph Borgen, 30, was beaten by a pack of men as he walked near a pro-Israel rally in Times Square in May 2021.

Bragg offered one of the attackers a plea deal that let him serve just six months in prison. 

The other three face felony charges, but remain free on either bond or bail.

Borgen blasted the “sweetheart slap-on-the-wrist deal” for the one attacker, calling it an example of Bragg’s “incompetence.” 

Speaking to Nadler, the father said, “You have Jewish roots here and ­behavior like this enables DA Bragg to do whatever he wants to do.” 

After saying he would never again vote for Sen. Chuck Schumer because Schumer’s office didn’t return his phone calls, Borgen added to Nadler, “If I lived in Manhattan, I wouldn’t vote for you, either.” 

Only an extreme optimist would believe the witnesses’ testimony will have a political impact.

Nationally and locally, most elected Dems have developed a tin ear and a cold heart about crime. 

Their compassion, if they have any, is usually reserved for the criminal class, as if the thugs and thieves are the victims.

In their warped view, the culprits are police, judges and a nation that is racist because it believes crime deserves punishment. 

On cue, the mayor-elect of Chi­cago, Brandon Johnson, said after hundreds of young people rampaged through downtown that, while he doesn’t condone the action, it’s “not constructive to demonize youth starved of opportunities.” 

See, the violent mob is the victim of society, so rampagers and looters can’t be held accountable.

Good luck to Chicago. 

No brave voices vs. DAs 

Bragg is among a group of left-wing DAs across the country who get everything backward.

But it is noteworthy that, to my knowledge, very few Democrats have broken ranks and dared to criticize his far-too-lenient policies. 

Even Mayor Adams, elected on an anti-crime agenda, has inexplicably tiptoed around the DA, creating confusion about the mayor’s own convictions. 

Other supposed moderates have either been on board with the anti-police madness or stayed silent out of fear the far left will primary them. 

Albany is a prime example of what happens when a one-party state kowtows to the left.

Former liberals like Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie now let the wing nuts call the shots, which is a big reason why the state leads the nation in out-migration. 

Gov. Hochul abandoned her own centrist roots and lurched so far left that she almost lost her election last year largely over soaring crime.

The relative near-miss seems to have knocked some sense into her as she is now pushing the Legislature for reforms on criminal-justice laws. 

However, her goals are so modest that even if she gets all she wants, public safety won’t significantly improve.

So Albany remains the place where hope goes to die. 

All of which raises the fundamental question: Why in hell do so many New Yorkers keep voting for people who think high levels of crime are acceptable?

WH ‘assisted living’ for Joe

Reader Ruth Cohen sees a big picture, writing: “The answer as to why we are failing on the global scale is that Joe Biden is demented. The president belongs in assisted living, not in the Oval Office.”

“The White House is likely run as an assisted-living facility for him. He gets oriented to time, place and person, then gets his script for the day, including instructions on when to stop talking and what to avoid discussing. He takes a variety of meds for conditions hidden from the public.”

Warning from Calif. on NY migrant rise

Reader Robert Arnold thinks New York is not paying enough attention to its growing migrant crisis and says ignoring it is “like going to The Sistine Chapel and not looking up. 

“My California is a few decades ahead in dealing with the arrival of a similar demographic cohort and we could teach you some important lessons.” 

“It’s time you ask what assimilation will look like and how daily life will be changed for traditional residents.”