Defund the Police was never going to be a winning strategy and its many practical and political repercussions are still plaguing Democrats at all levels, federal, state, and local. It doesn’t take polling data to know that the great majority of Americans do not want police departments cutting back because of slashed budgets. And, of course, the progressive left’s push to reduce police funding has mostly hurt the one community on whose behalf Democrats pretended to be acting when they jumped on the post-George Floyd bandwagon – the black residents of America’s already crime-ridden inner-cities.
With polls suggesting that he is well on the way to being known as the least popular president in American history and his party staring down a crushing defeat in November, Joe Biden has the nerve to portray himself, on Twitter, as a friend to the police.
As the 2022 midterm elections came over the horizon, some elected and prospective Democratic Party officials began distancing themselves from the Defund the Police campaign, but that ship has already sailed, and so they came up with a new strategy.
The select committee investigating the events of Jan. 6, 2021, in the nation’s capital quickly became a decidedly Stalinist piece of political theater in which few Americans are taking more than a passing interest. But, because a small number of agitators got into physical altercations with Capitol Police officers on that fateful day, Democrats went for what could be described as an impressively ambitious Hail Mary pass; they started to use those relatively minor incidents as a way of turning the tables on Republicans by claiming that the events of Jan. 6 show it is not Democrats, but rather their political opponents, who are anti-police.
There is no Forgetting Democrat Calls to Defund the Police
(Photo By Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
It is a plan with a lot of holes. No police officers were killed or even gravely injured during the pro-Trump rally on Capitol Hill. There were perhaps 70,000 to 80,000 people in attendance. If there had existed among those demonstrators anything approaching the level of anti-cop sentiment displayed by left-wing rioters during the summer of 2020, the Capitol Police would have suffered terrible casualties. Many people who were there in Washington, DC, on that day – along with many who were not – still suspect that the troublemakers fighting with police were not really Trump supporters at all, but individuals whose motive was chaos and violence to ultimately paint the former president’s loyalists in exactly the light Democrat politicians have always tried to paint them. So, perhaps just a convenient coincidence – or a pre-determined plan.
There is also the problem that no Democrats – not even Biden himself – have publicly and unequivocally condemned the 2020 rioters. Those BLM and Antifa thugs not only vocalized their wish to do violence against the police with slogans like, “Pigs in a blanket, fry ‘em like bacon,” but actually attacked officers, firebombed police precincts, and set patrol cars ablaze. Police officers were killed during the riots of that year. More sustained serious physical injury – and some of those injuries will be carried for life. Current or former police officers, then, could be forgiven for thinking it insulting that Biden is now trying to portray himself as a friend of law enforcement.
On July 26, Mr. Biden – or whoever runs his Twitter account – tweeted, “Brave women and men in uniform across America should never forget that the defeated former president of the United States watched January 6 happen and didn’t have the spine to act.”
In a separate but accompanying tweet, Biden can be seen in a bizarre video clip – likened by some to a “hostage video” – again referring to Jan. 6. In the video, Biden appears very much as though he is heavily medicated. He stares, wide-eyed and without even a single blink, into the camera – or more likely into the teleprompter – saying in part, “You can’t be pro-insurrection and pro-cop. You can’t be pro-insurrection and pro-democracy. You can’t be pro-insurrection and pro-American.” It was not a good look – not for the man who cultivated a “good old Uncle Joe,” image during the 2020 campaign; the reasonable guy who was going to bring civility and decency and competence back to the White House. Now he appears bitter, angry, and barely able to function.
https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1551993265473323010?s=20&t=Toy6sYPf4F29_C7WCYq-nA
The Defund the Police campaign has very likely done lasting damage to Biden’s party. The negative effects will play out in November and beyond – quite likely into the 2024 presidential campaign. While Trump continues to hold rallies during which he delivers a strong law and order message, the Democrats will be hard-pressed to come up with a candidate who can honestly claim to be pro-cop, even if Biden himself does not try for a second term.
