Democratic Whip James Clyburn: 'Defund the police' cost Democrats seats

[JHB]

21. What needs to be actively denounced is Republican and conservative media lying about us

Where did that phrase come from? From people and activists protesting police brutality, not from Democratic sloganeering.

But FOX and every other cog in the conservative outrage machine jumped on it and pasted it all over us, just like they've done with dozens of boogeyman issues. Grab your guns! Sharia law! Marxism! You built that!

What we need to get out in front of and denounce is this entire practice. Pound hard on all the times they use hare-em scare-em language to get people stampeding, but it never came true. Drive it home that this is a tactic, not reality. Repeat, repeat, put it in peoples' heads that the people telling them these things are selling something, and why should they take the salesman at his word?

Attack the people and organizations that need undermining the most. "Getting out in front" of just about anything else is pretty much an exercise in the circular firing squad.