Defunding the police might be a winning issue for scoring points on Twitter, but according to Tuesday’s elections, it is a losing issue at the polls — at least in Minneapolis.
A ballot measure voted on this week read in part, “Shall the Minneapolis City Charter be amended to remove the Police Department and replace it with a Department of Public Safety?” Voters rejected Question 2 handedly, with 56.17 percent of residents voting no on the amendment.
The results should have sent a shockwave across the cocktail parties of the liberal bourgeois in DC, many of whom proudly shout about defunding the police from the rooftops of their fancy apartment buildings. How could an uber-progressive dream like this fail to gain support from voters — especially in a liberal city of all places?! If this Squad-stamped idea failed in Minneapolis, where, if anywhere, could it succeed?
The answers are bleak for Democrats — but fear not: most political leaders have zero intention of asking any of these questions. Introspection is so passé. Instead, the far-left progressives will double down on their deranged, unpopular ideas. Besides giving away free stuff and fighting global warming, defunding the police is a key component to the current progressive agenda. And while it might not be popular with residents of crime-infested cities, the scheme is very popular with Rolling Stone magazine, Jane Fonda and John Legend. That’s what really matters, right?
After all, if these anti-police politicians were interested in what Americans want, they would have dropped this insane mission a long time ago. Instead, attention-hungry phonies like Representative Cori Bush of Missouri parade in front of television cameras and spew hypocritical nonsense. When the anti-police advocate was asked about her expensive private security, Bush defiantly told CBS, “I have private security because my body is worth being on this planet right now.” Well Cori, apparently the folks in Minneapolis feel the same way about their bodies! Who would’ve thought?
Moderate Democrats should have shut down the Defund the Police hoopla before it gained significant traction. Alas, like always, the cowardly centrists — fearful of being targeted by the next AOC — were swept along with the foolishness in the hope that they would be spared in the eventual revolution.
Even so, there were some public figures who expressed their doubts about this bizarre movement taking over the mainstream. One particularly poignant take came from Charles Barkley who noted, during Inside the NBA, that these progressive ideas would disproportionately affect minorities. “Because you know who ain’t gonna defund the cops? White neighborhoods and rich neighborhoods. That notion that they keep saying that, I’m like ‘wait a minute, who are Black people supposed to call, Ghostbusters?”
Woke activists and social-justice keyboard warriors enjoy retweeting think pieces on why defunding the police will actually make us safer. But their boneheaded plans would have real-life ramifications for people who can’t afford a home in Alyssa Milano’s gated community.
Beyond the physical dangers of defunding the police, the Squad’s righteous cause is politically perilous as well. After the 2020 elections, a frustrated Representative Abigail Spanberger warned her colleagues that their catchy slogans were political poison:
“The number one concern that people brought to me in my race that I barely re-won was defunding the police. And I’ve heard from colleagues who say, ‘Oh it’s the language of the streets, we should respect that.’ We’re in Congress. We are professionals. We are supposed to talk about things in the way where we mean what we are talking about. If we don’t mean we should defund the police, we shouldn’t say that.”
But the problem for Spanberger, and the Democratic party as a whole, is that plenty of these activists do mean what they say. Take Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The congresswoman from the Bronx said in June 2020, “Defunding police means defunding police.”
Progressive Democrats and those even further left are not trying to be coy or nuanced about their mission. The Squad’s honesty is what elicits fierce loyalty from their base of passionate followers. Unfortunately that same honesty will likely produce a healthy amount of skepticism from any voter with a modicum of common sense.
In Minneapolis, where homicides are up 16 percent since last year, the residents decided that they are not interested in being guinea pigs in the blue-checkmarks’ social-worker-defended utopia. In New York City, Big Apple residents just elected Eric Adams, a former police captain, who promised to boost public safety in the crime-ridden city.
The American people are sending a very clear message at the polls right now, but the petulant progressives seem hell bent on ignoring the signs. These all-or-nothing radicals will enter the denial stage over the death of their precious Defund the Police movement. Rather than move on, they will drag this defeated, lifeless idea into every new election cycle — and they will see some fatal results.
