General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Just saw Kamau Bell on CNN still defending the phrase "defund the police". [View all]EffieBlack
(14,249 posts)I don't know of one Democratic political candidate or campaign that ran on or endorsed "defund the police." This is a phrase pushed by a handful of private citizens and activists, most of whom have no official affiliation with the Democratic Party, other than possibly being among the millions of other members who possess a dizzying array of varying opinions on all types of topics.
So what if the Republicans jumped on this particular phrase and ran with it and used it in their campaign ads? They do that ALL the time with all kinds of things. Because they lie and mislead. If "defund the police" had never been uttered, they'd use something else. In fact they did use other things. Plenty of them. That's what they do.
And one of the reasons they do it is because they know, by virtue of the fact we've proven it to them over and over again, that we will jump on their feigned outrage, adopt it as our own, and then leverage that outrage to THEIR advantage instead of either smacking it down or
depriving it of oxygen altogether.
Our obsession with beating Democrats about the head over a slogan that our party has neither adopted not utilized would be amusing if it weren't so stupid and harmful. Democrats have an alarming and troubling tendency to eagerly grab the club that Republicans carved out and then use it to smash our own selves upside out own heads. Meanwhile Republicans are probably laughing their asses off watching us beat ourselves bloody.
It's a SLOGAN, people. And not even an official one. We don't have control over what people out in the world say and if we think they said something stupid and Republicans are trying to use it against us, we certainly shouldn't help them amplify it far beyond anything they could have ever done.
Let's stop making fools of ourselves fighting over three damned words and focus on our own policies and our own messaging. If you think "defund the police" is a bad slogan, fine. Stop whining about it and demanding that people you have no control over stop saying it and come up with a better one - one that will resonate better with people you think are too stupid to understand what "defund the police" means but will vote for Democrats if only they hear better slogans. And then do everything you can to advance that message instead of repeating "Defund the police is bad message!!! Defund the police is bad message!!! Defund the police is bad message!!!" over and over and over and over.
Damn, y'all. Get a grip.