This is how you blow a very winnable election

Politics & Elections
101

Like you said, there are plenty of Democrats who call out violence and “unsociable” tactics. Biden does as well. I don’t know that doing so “sooner and more often” is a good idea. That’s the sort of thing that ends up having rushes to judgement, which is the one thing that I think that we all agreed upon as a negative in the cancel culture thread.

The difference between protesters and police is that protesters are not screened, hired, trained, equipped, and given policies and orders to follow by their bosses.

Anyone can show up at a protest and choose to work against the best interests of the protesters for selfish, shortsighted, or even nefarious purposes. Unless anyone can just show up and start performing law enforcement, then the equivalence is extremely disingenuous.

102

I don’t think it’s so much an excuse, as it’s that they’re taking the slogan at face value and thinking “We can’t do that, it’s insane.”, when in fact the actual intent isn’t anything so dramatic. I mean, you see state-level Republican lawmakers here in Texas getting riled up as if it literally means to defund the police, as opposed to shift funding and responsibility for some thing away from the police. And people believe them, when they treat it as if it’s literal.

That’s why I’m saying the choice of phrase was at best, unfortunate, if not downright counterproductive.

103

And that is one of the reasons that it is not used by anyone who actually has any real clout or power, and is not used very often even among the low level protesters anymore.

It absolutely is an excuse when the actual meaning of the phrase has been explained, over and over and over again. And rather than saying, “Oh, that’s what that means.”, they say, “No, that’s not what it means.”

But, it doesn’t matter, it was used, and since it was used, it will always be an excuse to not support the movement. Even if it is never uttered again by a single police reform activist ever again, it will continue to be repeated by fragile whites to scare other fragile whites to give up their freedoms in order to further oppress minorities.

They want to believe that it is real because they have already chosen to believe the worst of their opposition. If you’ve watched the RNC, you will see that they are riling up their base on things that never even happened.

What I am saying is that the phrase was not chosen. It was an emergent phenomena from the circumstances.

For quite some time, people have been asking for reforms, and reforms have either not happened, or have been a pittance of what actually needed to be addressed. The police keep saying that you can either take the policing they offer as is, or leave it. Finally, someone gets fed up and says, “Fuck it! We’ll leave it. Abolish them. Defund them.” And that goes viral, as it is a sentiment that resonates with many.

That that becomes a rallying cry for the disaffected and oppressed should act as a warning sign as to how bad the conditions are, not as an excuse to continue them.

104

Not according to your cite:

Jibe may be also used to mean “to taunt,” but it is the only one of the three that should be used to mean “is in accord with” (as in “That doesn’t jibe with what I thought”).

[Bolding mine]

105

Or, to put it simply, shut up Black people you’re not complaining correctly.

106

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.

107

I wonder if this is the moment to leverage Harris’ background as a prosecutor. Make her the bad-ass. Have her deliver a message along the lines of …

When you throw the incompetent Trump administration out of office, we’ll make sure police know the difference between peaceful protestors exercising their First Amendment rights, and violent rioters who are basically just criminals. And we’ll push cities to prosecute these criminals, be they Black or White, because looting and vandalism hurts everyone.

The fact that she herself is Black makes the message even more effective.

108

Missed the edit window – I meant to include something like:

We’ll crack down on vigilantes who create more chaos by taking the law into their own hands.

109

That’s great, but it’s not going to prevent white nationalists and white anarchists from deliberately joining a protest they have no interest in being a part of for any reason other than to muck it up.

I mean, look at the Autozone guy in Minneapolis - white guy.

Look at the protesters in Portland. Mostly white people.

Look at the protesters in Kenosha. A white teenage whackadoodle and skater punks.

It’s not BLM protesters who are causing the problem, so to call out these protests is just throwing shade on minorities’ right to assemble peacefully, which the overwhelming majority of them have.

What’s really happening is that the civil war has likely begun. It’s a low-grade civil war now, but it will escalate as time passes, mainly because it’s in the interests of one political faction to make sure that it does.

110

I’ll admit that I didn’t catch all of the DNC, but what I did I never heard anyone say “defund the police.”

Did they?

If so, then you have a point, and we should discuss this matter with those individuals.

If not, if the only people saying “defund the police” are the right wing echo chambers repeating it over and over, then I’m not sure what it is that you are wanting anyone to do that doesn’t involve a time machine or massive use of amnesiatics.

111
112

So you think anything founded by an Asian is “propaganda”? #bigotry

113

Something tells me that all these aren’t examples of right-wing echo chamber denizens.

That’s my point- it doesn’t really matter what the DNC doesn’t say with respect to that- they have to make a clear point that they don’t agree, or else be assumed to be tacitly agreeing with it. Which when there’s a very fine line between a demonstration and a riot in a lot of people’s minds, is what needs to be done. They need to come out and say “We don’t support defunding police departments. Let me repeat that- we do not support defunding police departments. What we DO support is X, Y and Z.”, where X, Y and Z are the various police reform efforts.

114

The problem is, is that they do agree with the concept of “defund the police” with the definiton of reallocating police resources to better serve the community. The problem is is that the right wing echo chamber insists that it means something else.

So, the democrats are left in an odd spot. Do they abandon the protesters and their grass roots movement, and ensure that not a single one of them or their supporters comes out to vote in order to court the vote of those who refuse to listen to anyone when it comes to explaining the meaning of the slogan?

It does seem as though the actual office holders and candidates are careful to not actually use the phrase, but they also don’t want to dismiss it, as that is dismissing the whole movement.

I admit that sometimes I like to give pro-lifers a bit of a hard time because they are not pro-life when it comes to anything but forcing someone to give birth. But I know that that is not what they mean when they say it, so in an actual policy discussion, taking a pro-lifer to task because I refuse to understand what they mean when they say it is actually my failing, not theirs.

Insisting that defund the police means what you(royal) insist that it means, rather than what the ones saying it say that it means, is the same sort of disingenuous play.

I don’t really see the advantage in catering to the disingenuous at the expense of those who truly are suffering. I do not see the advantage morally, and more to the point, I do not see the advantage politically.

If Biden came out, and actually condemned those calling for “Defund the police”, rather than just coming out and explaining what it is that he is planning on doing to address their concerns without actually using the phrase himself, then I would have a hard time voting for him, and I’m a white middle class suburbanite. Were I a black city resident, there’s no way that I would brave the obstacles and possible dangers necessary to vote in order to support someone that threw me under the bus that way.

115

This may be one of the few times where the politicians “deflect and never answer a direct question” ploy may be useful. If asked about “defunding the police” it would be acceptable to immediately jump into talking about reallocation. Usually when politicians do that I completely hate it.

116

On a minor pedantic note - the reason politiicans deflect and don’t answer questions is that it’s often useful which is why they do it.

On this particular issue, I agree. I think left-wing activists use “Defund the Police” in a deliberately vague way that allows them to basically put an anarchist idea in people’s heads while making it difficult for moderates to criticize it, and simultaneously scare moderates into thinking they have to back some kind of reform to quell the crazy talk.

Biden basically needs some talking points to trot out that avoid him having to acknowledge the term.

117

It would be foolish for Biden to endorse “Defund the Police” given that Jim Clyburn, Al Sharpton and Karen Bass, among other black Democratic leaders have argued against it, in as many words, precisely because they want to avoid being associated with the calls of the extreme left-wing to do just that.

118

Right, but it would be prudent for him to agree with much of the ideas that are behind that movement.

119

Biden actually does not and has come out and not only said he is not for defunding the police, but actually spending more in targetted funds dedicated to proper police training. He’s actually gotten hit hard by the left for doing so.

120

Right. By calling for increased funding. The opposite of calls to “defund” and “abolish”. Do you think he and the Democrats run the risk of…: