Thread by @whstancil

Well if any buzzed-about election consultants convinced the entire political media to attribute Dem weakness to “defund the police” turning off Hispanic voters, congratulations for wasting literally a year of incredibly critical time for the party

https://twitter.com/MattGrossmann/status/1471105753075355655

There was, as I have pointed out time and time and time again, never even the slightest iota of evidence that “defund the police” has hurt Democrats

You could tell "defund" didn't hurt Democrats because this slogan was adopted in a high-profile way at a discrete point in time and there was no change at all in topline polling figures

The argument against "defund" relied on a sort of folk intuition among mainstream pundits that people love cops, combined with a more subterranean signal: supporting police became more associated with supporting Republicans

The problem is, "Republicans became more supportive of police in 2020" doesn't necessarily mean "More people became Republicans." It could also mean that existing Republicans became more pro-cop in response to George Floyd, a trend that was obvious to anyone with eyes!

The critical flaws in the popularist case against "defund the police were self-evident from the day it was first stated, and I and others raised them. It didn't matter, though - once it started circulating among the Very Smart Boys of Twitter it was treated as unquestionably true

And Twitter is such an echo chamber, with such an impact on media, that it quickly migrated to all corners of liberal politics. Just last week you had Edsall citing a political science luminaries (Theda Skocpol!) who stated with blunt confidence that "defund" was killing Dems.

This isn't just a dumb Twitter dispute. This had REAL IMPACTS on how Dems have tried to save themselves at a critical moment. Instead of pursuing a bold, attractive politics, they've been seduced by the popularist idea that they need to shave away scary activists from the party.

My concern here is less about the activists - I mean, they're still out there, doing what they do, god bless them - and more the Democratic party. It's trying to treat a fatal disease with the political equivalent of blood-letting, because it listened to a bunch of witch doctors

And since right now the Democratic Party is pretty much the last bulwark between us and total right-wing authoritarian takeover, those popularist witch doctors have screwed us all

(Why wouldn’t “defund” hurt Democrats if it polled badly, you might ask?

Because in summer 2020, anti-police activism received favorable news coverage! Poll-testing measures things in their UNMEDIATED form, but voters only receive and respond to news in its MEDIATED form!)