Liberals tone down calls to ‘defund police’ amid GOP attacks

Source: The Hill | June 24, 2021 | Mike Lillis and Scott Wong

Progressives are toning it down on police reform as a growing stack of evidence suggests it is hurting the party with voters.

While a number of liberal Democrats remain opposed to virtually any expansion in law enforcement funding, gone are the days when progressive lawmakers were calling openly for “defunding the police” — a message that Republicans used to devastating effect in clobbering House Democrats at the polls in 2020. 

“Everybody knows it’s a bad idea,” said one moderate Democratic lawmaker who’s noticed the softer tone this year. “People like having police keeping them safe. And I think we had to do a better job of demanding reform, but supporting the police. And we only sang one song” in 2020.

The rhetorical shift reflects not only the lessons learned after those election results came in, but also the drastic change in the political landscape over the past year. 

Last summer, the country was roiled by the televised murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police, sparking widespread protests over racial bias in law enforcement and prompting a number of prominent liberals to urge cuts in police funding. 

This summer, the national spotlight has moved away from Floyd’s death and toward the spike in violent crime that’s struck cities across the country, from New York and Baltimore to Los Angeles and Seattle. The tragic trend has sparked plenty of attacks from Republicans, who are blaming liberal, “pro-crime” policies for the deadly uptick, while leading Democratic leaders to urge a lighter touch when it comes to police reform advocacy. 

It’s a message that seems to be sinking in. 

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Republicans gained seats in last year’s midterms, a fact that set off debates over whether the GOP was helped by the Democratic calls to defund the police. The House GOP campaign arm has pounced on the spike in violent crime, blasting emails blaming the increase on vulnerable Democrats.

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Rep. Cheri Bustos (D-Ill.) knows firsthand how effective the GOP’s defund-the-police attacks were on Democrats last cycle. The centrist lawmaker from the Quad Cities region led the House Democrats’ campaign arm in the 2020 cycle and was a prime target of those attacks, even though her husband and many of her friends are longtime cops.

Bustos survived her reelection — beating her GOP challenger by roughly 4 points in a district that favored Donald Trump over Joe Biden — but Democrats’ disastrous showing last fall nudged her out of the top campaign post and she’s opted to retire in 2022. Now, she’s sounding the alarm about GOP attacks painting Democrats as weak on policing and crime.

“My husband’s a sheriff of Rockland County, Illinois, so I do not believe in defunding police. I believe in adequately funding police, and making sure that you know we get this right. … Defund the police was not the right message,” Bustos told The Hill.

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