Just saw Kamau Bell on CNN still defending the phrase "defund the police".

[StarfishSaver]

234. There are lots of reasons we nearly lost the Blue Wave advantage in the House, etc.

Blaming it on "Defund the Police" is a lazy excuse.

You can claim otherwise all you want, but I don't believe that the voters who are claiming they didn't vote for Democrats because of "Defund the Police" any further than I can throw them. I believe it's an excuse, one of the many in a long line of excuses these voters always give for not voting for Democrats and for voting for backward thinking Republicans. And every time they come up with a new excuse, some Democrats get themselves all twisted around their axles insisting trying to shut other Democrats up.

The same think happened in 2018 - people forget how many Democrats insisted that Democrats who loudly pushed for impeachment nearly lost the election because voters weren't interested in impeachment but wanted to hear about healthcare and other policy solutions.

We heard it in 2016 when people claimed that Hillary didn't do enough to reach out to the white working class voters in Wisconsin and Michigan and Pennsylvania.

This is the same old same old.

And one thing that also repeats itself is that this argument that Democrats are sending the wrong message ALWAYS is about sending the wrong message to this same group of white voters who claim that something about the Democrats rubs them the wrong way - be it "Defund the Police" or "Black Lives Matter&quot people forget that that was one of the cryponite phrases before they found a new phrase to blame) or there's just something about Hillary they didn't like, etc. But there never seems to be ANY concern AT ALL about whether any approach of the Democrats might be off-putting to Black and Brown voters.

So, for example, when it was claimed that Hillary lost support of many of the Black and Brown voters who voted for Obama, what was the solution? Run after more white voters to make up the slack. We didn't have these endless debates about whether the Democrats over-the-top outreach to white voters was turning off Black and Brown voters or how the Democrats need to do a better job communicating to Black and Brown voters so that we will turn out in Obama-like numbers. No - in fact, not only was there no constant debate about how to make us happy, we were partially BLAMED for the outcome and when anyone tried to talk about stepping up outreach to us, they were shouted down with cries of "STOP PLAYING IDENTITY POLITICS! YOU'LL DRIVE AWAY THE WHITE PEOPLE WE'RE TRYING TO ATTRACT!!!"

So, I just don't buy this "Defund the Police" is the reason we're not doing better. This is a false construct ginned up by Republicans and that too many Democrats are lapping up like crazy instead of figuring out how to not let Republicans drag us around by the nose.

It's ridiculous in my view.