New polls show Americans are worried about surging crime, and many blame the recent wave of brazen thefts across the nation on the “defund the police” movement.
But a key Democratic lawmaker isn’t backing down from that slogan – and that has party insiders worried it’ll cost them control over the House in November’s crucial midterm elections.
Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., told Axios the real problem is that her party has been too slow to embrace the “defund the police” movement… just in time to ruin President Joe Biden’s weekend.
“I always tell [fellow Democrats], ‘If you all had fixed this before I got here, I wouldn’t have to say these things,’” she told the website.
She also insisted that voters want it – and, despite the negative polls, Dems need to hurry up and pass it while they’re still in control.
“‘Defund the police’ is not the problem,” she insisted. “We dangled the carrot in front of people’s faces and said we can get it done and that Democrats deliver, when we haven’t totally delivered.”
More centrist members of the party have been attempting damage control.
Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y., slammed the defund movement in an interview with CNN last week.
“It comes off as profoundly tone-deaf and out of touch,” he said. “The majority of Americans and a majority of Democrats are in favor of reforming, rather than abolishing, or even defunding, the police.”
He called for better policing with “more constitutional and accountable and transparent” practices rather than defunding departments.
Even Biden has tried to stage a public intervention.
“The answer is not to defund the police,” he said earlier this month at an event at the headquarters of the New York Police Department.
Then, addressing an audience of cops, he said the answer is “to give you the tools, the training, the funding, to be partners, to be protectors.”
But voters are fed up with crime – and are blaming the wing of the Democratic Party that’s been behind the “defund the police” movement.
A recent Politico poll found three out of four Americans believe “defund” is a reason for recent crime – and just under half call it a major reason.
“Innocent Americans across the country are becoming victims of a violent crime wave,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky, said on Twitter recently. “My hometown Louisville set a new all-time murder record last year and averages a carjacking every 42 hours. Democrats have got to quit the radical anti-police rhetoric and soft-on-crime policies.”
Yet despite her “defund the police” rhetoric, Bush hasn’t been shy about using campaign cash to fully fund private security for herself, shelling out $65,000 for protection over a single quarter last year.
With the midterms coming up, many on the left are pointing to a warning from former President Barack Obama shortly after the 2020 election, when Democrats lost seats in the House despite Biden’s victory at the top of the ticket.
Obama – and others – say it was at least in part due to the “defund” rhetoric.
“You lost a big audience the minute you say it, which makes it a lot less likely that you’re actually going to get the changes you want done,” he told the Snapchat political show “Good Luck America” weeks after the election.
With Democrats reeling in the polls today, this same slogan could once again come back to haunt them in November’s crucial midterm elections.
Bush herself may have accidentally given voters fed up with crime a reason to choose Republicans: She essentially promised that “defund” would essentially be dead with the GOP in charge.
“If [Republicans] take the majority, it’s just done as far as trying to get the legislation across,” she told Axios.
— Walter W. Murray is a reporter for The Horn News. He is an outspoken conservative and a survival expert.