“Defund the Police,” the egregious idea born on the left sometime last year, was rejected across America this week.
The movement erred in many ways, but particularly by focusing on abolishing law enforcement instead of potential reforms. The radicals suffered several setbacks at the ballot box, which is understandable, as Democrat-led cities face a historic surge in violent crime.
Pregnant People + Defund Police + CRT + Vax Mandates + Fauci + Not Taking Questions + $4 gas + $15 ground beef + Let’s Go Brandon = Governor Youngkin
— Denny the Bull 🌺 (@DennisPotvinDem) November 3, 2021
Out in Seattle, where disastrous Mayor Jenny Durkan will not even run for reelection after her “summer of love” destroyed the city and led Marxists to kill each other, voters preferred Bruce Harrell, who promised to hire more officers over incendiary Lorena González, who already cut police funding by nearly 20% as a city council member. In their city attorney’s race, even progressive Seattleites chose a Republican over an anti-police goon with a history of pro-riot tweets. Neither contest was close.
In Buffalo, activists hoped they’d broken through when India Walton, a socialist who marched in anti-police demonstrations, won the mayoral primary, defeating incumbent Byron Brown. But Brown refused to bow out of the race, choosing to run in the general election via a quixotic write-in campaign.
Brown pointed out that Walton proposed cutting millions from the police budget and ran ads featuring local officers decrying the cuts. He ended up succeeding, defeating his execrable opponent in a landslide.
New York City voters chose former police officer Eric Adams as their new mayor. Upon his victory, Adams discussed how rising violent crime was on voters’ minds, not identity politics.
“Families want their children educated, they want to be safe in their cities,” he said. “So when we were talking in some parts of the country of disbanding police departments or family members were listening to gunshots and not alarm clocks, that was just really out of step with what people wanted on the ground and I knew that.”
Related: James Carville Has Stern Warning for Woke Democrats
But the biggest blow to the “defund” movement came in Minneapolis, where the ignoble idea had its genesis.
Minneapolis voters handily defeated Question 2, which would’ve dismantled the police department — like hypocrite Ilhan Omar sought — and replaced it with a new Jacobin-style “department of public safety.” No one knew what that replacement would’ve looked like, and the referendum was rightly seen as an attempt to simply eliminate policing.
A Minneapolis map shows that poorer “communities of color” mostly refused to support anti-police efforts, while wealthier areas did, as I forecasted Tuesday.
First full map from me tonight: Minneapolis Question 2 (this was the policing question) pic.twitter.com/EipmfnHvZ5
— Aaron Booth (@ActorAaronBooth) November 3, 2021
Pew recently found that only a paltry 15% of Americans think spending on local police should be reduced; it also showed that black and Hispanic Democrats were more likely than white Democrats to support increased funding.
This episode is white liberal guilt at its most odious.
The overarching message voter sent in Minneapolis and elsewhere was that while some do support modest reforms, they do not support draconian cuts to police budgets or staffing.
The movement to defund the police is effectively done, and if they want to persist, the hooligans must acknowledge people’s understandable desire for public safety.
Even Al Sharpton does.
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