Squad member Rashida Tlaib unequivocally called for the gutting of the police on Monday. The Detroit congresswoman tweeted: “No more policing, incarceration, and militarization. It can’t be reformed.”
If the Democrats don’t quickly disavow Tlaib’s tantrum, they had best be prepared for Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Majority Leader McConnell come January 2023. For more than a half-century, crime has retained its potency as a campaign issue. That reality is not about to change.
Republicans rode crime to the White House in 1968, 1988, and 2016. Mean streets and homicides helped propel Richard Nixon, George HW Bush and Donald Trump to the Oval Office. “Mostly peaceful” is oxymoronic. It also scares most people.
As Rep. James Clyburn, the No. 3 House Democrat and a key backer of Joe Biden, conceded after the Democrats lost 13 House seats in November’s election: “‘Defund the police’ is killing our party, and we’ve got to stop it.” Apparently, Tlaib couldn’t be bothered with Clyburn’s memo.
If the Squad’s prior bout of sloganeering left Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer presiding over precarious majorities, demands for abolition of the police are a recipe for electoral wipeout. Barring unforeseen circumstances, in-parties lose seats in midterms.
Beyond that, decennial reapportionment and redistricting are on their way. In other words, even before Tlaib’s latest Twitter outburst, things were looking dicey for the Dems. And now this, an updated version of the 1960s’ “burn baby burn” slogan.
While the congresswoman’s wholesale attack on law enforcement may gladden the hearts of the woke and the GOP, most Americans take a decidedly different view. According to a March US Today/Ipsos survey, less than one in five adults support defunding the police while more than half stand opposed.
Not surprisingly, two-thirds of whites and 84 percent of Republicans disfavored the proposal, but the idea also failed to garner support from Democrats and Black Americans. With homicide rates exploding across our cities, people want to see more police on the beat, not less.
Asked in an April 2021 survey, “Do you think regular police patrols in your neighborhood would make you feel less safe or more safe?”, 65 percent of Black Americans, seven of ten Latinos, and 71 percent of Democrats answered “more safe.”
To be sure, the intersection of race and law enforcement is an inescapable part of our nation’s narrative. Think Fugitive Slave Act. The deaths of George Floyd and Daunte Wright are the latest and most vivid reminders.
By the numbers, a majority of Americans, Democrats, Blacks, and Latinos agree that “police officers are more likely to use deadly force on Black Americans compared to white Americans.” Whether and how this problem and perception can be bridged or solved is an open question.
In 2017, a grieving Joe Biden penned Promise Me, Dad, an elegy to his late son Beau. But the book was also the tale of an old-time Northeast Democratic pol who understood that culture and coalitions both count.
Among other things, Biden paid his respects to two New York City policemen who were shot dead just for being cops. One was Latino, the other Asian American. Biden’s grief rang genuine: “The assassin’s bullet targeted not just two officers, not just a uniform. It targeted this city.”
For the record, Biden “got it” far more easily than Bill de Blasio, the city’s inept, tin-eared and term-limited mayor. As Biden put it, de Blasio “seemed happy that it was me representing the administration because he knew I had a close relationship with the police and the civil rights community.”
Whether President Biden can work wonders remains to be seen in this era of hyper-polarization and status anxiety. The endorsement of Donald Trump by New York City’s largest police unions coupled with off-duty police taking part in the Jan. 6 insurrection will make the task that much more difficult.
Lines of demarcation keep getting redrawn. Meanwhile the status gap and proximity between the police and the policed narrows, further fueling tensions and resentments.
Rep. Ayanna Pressley, another Squad member, added to the debate: “From slave patrols to traffic stops. We can’t reform this.” Tlaib, too, proclaimed, “Policing in our country is inherently & intentionally racist... I am done with those who condone government funded murder.”
Left unsaid is that swing voters may be done with Tlaib’s party sooner than she would like. On November 3, voters gave Trump the boot—but also put the Democrats on probation.
