As Democrats across the country and at all levels of government kowtow to the Black Lives Matter movement and antifa, they’re now finding themselves in a bit of a bind. These emotional protesters are calling for the defunding of police, and Democrats are having trouble balancing their position that systemic racism exists with calls from their base to do something so completely stupid.
While there is some debate over exactly what “defund the police” means, Mariame Kaba, the director of Project NIA, a grassroots group that works to end youth incarceration, and an anti-criminalization organizer, wrote in the New York Times that “defund the police” literally means “abolish the police.”
According to an ABC News/Ipsos poll, just 34 percent of Americans support defunding the police. A mere 9 percent of Republicans support this idea, but a whopping 55% percent of Democrats. When more than half in your party support defunding the police, that means the extreme position is actually mainstream in their party.
While Democrats in Congress seem hesitant to embrace the “defund the police” position, it’s safe to say that we’re not far off from it being officially part of their party platform. Just look at the party’s views on abortion. Democrats used to believe that abortions should “safe, legal, and rare.” In 2012, “rare” was no longer associated with their support of abortion, and their platform was updated to say they supported “safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay.” In other words, the Democratic Party now believes in unrestricted and taxpayer-funded abortion. While most Americans support the legality of abortion, that support loses its majority position once you hit the second and third trimesters. In fact, by the third trimester, a mere 13 percent believe abortion should be legal. Democrats in Congress, however, have simply refused to make any distinction between trimesters. Abortion is very lucrative to the organizations that fund them, so abortions being “rare” cuts into their business, which cuts into the donations that Democrats can get from them. Americans also oppose taxpayer funding of abortions. A recent Marist poll shows that 60 percent of Americans, including 37 percent of those who support abortion rights, oppose taxpayer funding of abortions.
Democrats in Congress support abortion up until the moment of birth and any efforts to curb abortion rights to align more with mainstream America’s views on the subject are met with fierce opposition. That’s what happens when you’re funded by the abortion lobby. It’s hardly a stretch to believe that those elected officials who aren’t comfortable with the idea of defunding the police right now will eventually embrace it with open arms and wallets. And assuming this ABC News/Ipsos poll is correct, that time may come sooner than later.
It’s easy to write off the “defund the police” movement as just an extreme position by a select few, but how many positions once considered extreme became mainstream in the Democratic Party?
Remember, John F. Kennedy was a tax-cutting anti-Communist.
Democrat leaders in blue cities and states are looking at the riots and looting and anarchy through rose-colored glasses. Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan doesn’t seem to give a hoot about anarchists taking control of a six-block area of her city, where residents within the so-called Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone are seeing their rights taken away, and victims of robbery and violent crimes like rape are unable to get help from law enforcement. “We could have a Summer of Love!” Durkan told CNN’s Chris Cuomo with a chuckle and a smile.
If Democrats are willing to turn a blind eye to anarchy and destruction, is it really that hard to believe that defunding the police will creep its way into the party platform at some point in the relatively near future? And the Democrats who will make it happen are the ones who have their own security and will not be affected by such policies, should they actually be implemented in some fashion.
If George Floyd’s family can see that defunding the police isn’t the answer, then the Democratic Party and their base ought to be able to see that as well.
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Matt Margolis is the author of Trumping Obama: How President Trump Saved Us From Barack Obama’s Legacy and the bestselling book The Worst President in History: The Legacy of Barack Obama. You can follow Matt on Twitter @MattMargolis
