No, but we are now getting into policy wonk territory, and far outside of slogan territory.
Few slogans ever get through the whole of the changes to policy they are advocating. In fact, pretty much none do. So, to complain that this one doesn’t seems just a bit ridiculous, IMHO.
Not really. It was pretty much grass roots by people on the ground who were personally fed up with the police acting as agents of terror in their neighborhoods. To a large extent, they didn’t want any police, they felt that they would be better off without them.
They had been promised reforms over and over, and those promises never materialized into actual changes in the way that they were treated at the hands of law enforcement. When the police started with their “Take it or Leave it” attitude, some people stood up and said, fine, we’ll leave it.
Now, do I think that they’d be better off with no police? Probably not. But do they have a valid point, a reason to think that they would? I imagine so.
It was no think tank or advocacy group who came up with the phrase, it was people who were at the end of their rope, desperate for some sort of change in the misery that was their daily lives. It was people who cried out in anguish and desperation for help in removing the agents of oppression who abuse them daily.
Those are the people that you want to criticize.
The phrase is no longer being marketed by anyone on the left, only by propagandists on the right. And as much as people seem to be buying it, they are doing excellent with their marketing.
The slogan is exactly what I was criticizing, not the policy.
And as I said, I’m very sympathetic to these people. But I still think it’s a dumb slogan. And I think I can criticize the slogan while agreeing with their premise(s).
In a democracy the marketing is required, not optional.
Defunding or eliminating the police has always been a ridiculous idea. Someone needs to enforce the laws and provide a measure of order and protection from crime. The officers I know spend a lot of time on social work type stuff as well as paperwork. There is not always someone else available to do the sort of things cops are routinely asked to do, 24/7, and it is a challenging job.
However, this does not mean that all the jobs police are asked to do are always best done by someone with general police training or who wears a badge. Spending funding wisely is not unreasonable. Prioritizing tasks best done by police seems appropriate. New Zealand has had success in recruiting officers by choosing the type of person who helps and sympathizes with people having difficulties and suggesting this type of person in their ads, but some tasks probably require authoritative types too. They should be appropriately and even extensively trained for whatever they do and have significant support and accountability. I think specialization and colleges are reasonable approaches.
The people who injured cops during January 6 deserve great condemnation for that. The police at their best greatly defend democracy.
That doesn’t really refute my assertion. I’d venture that the majority of those registered democrats are in Louisville and Lexington. But that’s also only among registered voters. The state is deeply red. Any state that would consistently send Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul isn’t exactly a bastion of liberalism. Spend some time talking to your average Kentuckian. Trump is huge here. And the values he espouses are generally shared by the general populace.
If the “deeply red” parts of the state aren’t registered to vote (and therefore can’t vote), does that matter? A state that sends very right wing people to Congress is one that certainly has pockets of red voters (at least historically), but if a majority of voters register as Democrat, it’s hard to insist that the state must be firmly red from a voting perspective, regardless of anecdotal evidence.
Granted, Trump got 62.1% of the vote in 2020 in Kentucky. It’s hard to square that with the registration information. Did people on the left just not vote? Biden didn’t even win overwhelmingly in the two counties he got, 59% in both. (Those are of course the counties that include Louisville and Lexington.)
If registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans, how is it so deeply red? Why do McConnell and Paul keep getting elected? Do a big chunk of those Dems simply not vote? Are thousands of Republicans actually registered as Democrats?
For the most part no, but it most certainly does affect state-level elections, and it’s state legislatures that re-draw district maps and enact election law that can disproportionately affect minorities.
There could be a lot of elderly Roosevelt Democrats who haven’t actually voted for a Democrat since Carter. My grandparents (from Kentucky, born before 1920) were as conservative as anybody, so I was shocked to learn they were registered Democrats. They just never bothered to switch parties.
Well, not literally then. It was a state of mind in some registered Democrats in the South; I doubt if that’s completely died out but who knows. Something’s got to explain the marked disparity between party registration and presidential vote in KY. Perhaps it’s just Democratic apathy and Republican fervor, as suggested above.
I think that’s one explanation that makes sense. Or Briny’s thought that they may be registered as Democrats, but never actually vote for them. (this would have to be a bunch of old pharts)
You can include Louisville and Lexington. I’m not saying anything other than that the people who voted for Biden must be a “silent majority,” because it’s not unusual to still see Trump signs and stickers and MAGA hats and people who think that voter fraud is how Biden ended up in the White House.
The conservatives and Trump voters are more visible and verbal.
I’m willing to admit that I’m wrong when I am (for instance, I was incorrect about the Republican/Democrat registered voter percentages), but finding a Biden supporter in the areas I live and work in is anecdotally very difficult.
Simply not voting is my take as well. But unlike Superdude, I think the state’s actually more blue, and that a Stacey Abrams-style registration/get-out-the-vote drive would turn things around.
The reds are more vocal (and aggressive) about a lot of things (for instance, in 30 years in Chicago not once did a person ask me what church I belonged to). But Mitch and Rand seem to keep getting re-elected because their voters show up more reliably and vote the party ticket. I’ve never heard anyone speak of either with enthusiasm, something people are shy about doing regarding Trump. I’ve seen plenty of Trump 2020 signs, for instance; never the others.