The fact of the matter is that the term is perceived as repellent by a lot of voters who aren’t “woke” or who aren’t fairly far to the left.
That’s a huge fail in terms of effectively messaging in a way to get the Democratic candidates elected, regardless of how you think people should feel, or white fragility or whatever other excuses you may make.
In other words, telling fragile whites that they are wrong, using terms like “Defund the Police” and all that stuff is fine and dandy, but it’s a piss-poor method to reach out to those people to try and get them to vote for you. What’s more, the choice of terms is frightening and repellent to more than just the far right. It tends to be a bit scary to people in the middle, right or wrong, ignorant or “woke” or whatever.
It’s a messaging failure, plain and simple. And I’d go so far as to say that the DNC didn’t come close to even refuting the term, much less the implied message. They should have known that it would be framed as “law and order vs black rights and chaos”, and should have acted firmly and decisively to distance themselves from it, and make a larger point about police reform and/or reallocation of resources, all while making a strong point that guilty people of whatever race should not go free, nor should lawbreaking be tolerated in the name of police reform.