Democrats Have a Real Problem, Part XI
Defund the police
The president of the Minneapolis City Council has announced that the council has a veto-proof majority that intends to move forward with plans to defund and dismantle the city’s police department. New York City Mayor—at least in name, at least for now—Bill de Blasio has announced that the city will take funds designated for the police department and redirect them to youth and social programs.
The “Defund the Police” movement is gaining ground on the left in other ways, too.
Democratic Party rising star Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez has thrown her support behind defunding police and even doubled down on it while taking a swipe at white suburbanites. Brian Fallon, a veteran of both the Barack Obama Administration and Hillary Clinton’s disastrous 2016 presidential campaign, likewise tweeted his support. Google “defund the police” and one finds articles from almost every mainstream outlet discussing the idea. These pieces are usually implicitly or openly sympathetic to the push.
Put it all together and the picture is clear—an unknown-but-significant number of voters on the left are increasingly supportive of defunding the police.
This is a bad idea.
I don’t mean it’s a bad idea logically or morally, though it is probably both of those. I mean this is a bad idea politically. A very, very bad idea. It’s such a bad idea, that it’s difficult to know just where to start criticizing it.
Off the bat, let’s agree that most—if not all—police departments need serious reform. Reasonable people may disagree about the magnitude of the excessive force/lack of empathy problem or about how much of it is racially motivated, but outside the Fox News-Breitbart corridor, it isn’t controversial to say American law enforcement officers use force far too easily, far too frequently, and this leads to far too many unnecessary fatalities. Given the disproportionate rate of LEO interactions with members of minority communities, the brunt of the excessive force and lack of empathy is borne by those minority communities so race is a critical element in the discussion even if one doesn’t believe overt racism is at issue in most cases.
However, herein lies the biggest problem with #DefundThePolice.
The police departments most in need of reform generally serve minority communities. According to most polls, minority communities are precisely the ones who do not support defunding the police. In one Vox poll, conducted over the winter between 2018 and 2019, only 18 percent of Black Americans and 13 percent of Hispanic Americans opposed hiring more police officers. That same article reveals that Gallup found in August of 2015 that Black and Hispanic Americans favored a larger police force more strongly than did White Americans, and the vast majority of all ethnic groups favored either larger police forces or the status quo over reduced police forces. This pattern repeated itself even amongst Black and Hispanic Americans who felt police treated minorities unfairly.
Keep in mind the Gallup survey would’ve been conducted in the middle of protests over Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, Missouri and the Vox poll is not two years old. So while attitudes regarding police forces may have changed in the meantime, it seems silly to assume they have.
It should be no surprise, then, that neither NAACP President Derrick Johnson nor Congresswoman Karen Bass, chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, lent their support to the movement.
The second problem with the groundswell behind defunding the police is that it takes yet another issue that would be a clear winner for the Democratic Party (i.e. police reform) and turns it into a sure loser (i.e. defund the police). As previously stated, most voters believe there is a serious issue inside American police departments. Whether Americans believe the problems are endemic or isolated-but-significant, it should be obvious that we believe they are glaring and must be addressed. Taking #ReformThePolice to war against President Donald Trump would be a cudgel to beat him coming and going. Voters would respond to the fundamental concept and then recoil as Donnie 45 tweeted up a rage about how the police were perfect, used the very best tactics, and nothing needed to be changed except maybe giving them rocket launchers.
Defunding the police, however, has the opposite effect—most voters recoil from the idea and it hands Trump an easy talking point to grind away on during his campaign rallies. Indeed, he’s already gotten started and other conservatives are following suit.
We could go on this way for quite some time:
- If defunding police is unpopular with a majority of minority voters, you can be damn sure it will go over like a lead zeppelin in rural America;
- Those voicing support for defunding the police are almost exclusively wealthy progressives or extremist activists, which are not groups in danger of supporting Trump or sitting the election out;
- The issue imperils vital, non-national congressional races where Democrats must answer for the movement in moderate districts;
And so on.
This whole fiasco is made all the dumber by the reality of what defunding the police actually means, which is basic reform in some quarters and “tear it down” in others. Meaning there’s a good chance “defund the police” is just a catchall for something more mundane, but the phrase was chosen because it’s more provocative and more sensational. That would be a spectacular idea except for its aforementioned unpopularity.
This is why Joe Biden’s campaign has announced the Democratic nominee for president doesn’t support defunding the police. But that doesn’t solve the matter because Biden is boxed in by the lefties who have made defunding the police increasingly non-negotiable and the center-lefties who demand police reform, but are firmly against any defunding. Additionally, many of the voters who are adamant in support of defunding the police are also adamant in support of open borders, universal health care, and several other ultra-progressive agenda items that Biden has already rejected. Their disappointment at being rejected yet again will only grow as the movement continues to gain momentum.
In the wake of George Floyd’s sinister and totally indefensible murder, it makes perfect sense to stand and demand action in solidarity with the United States’ minority communities, especially Black Americans. Yet it seems the boldest action taken by the Democratic Party is one neither these communities nor many others want.
