Thread by @auronburner

The left seems to be gearing up for another summer like 2020, this time over abortion, and twitter is already filling with apologia for intimidation protests at people's houses, rioting, and the most thinly veiled calls for political violence. Here's why that's a super bad idea:

This approach did not work in 2020. It was tried. Everything the far left is saying they want to do to fight for Roe, they tried it with BLM in 2020 and what'd they get? In terms of actual substantive policy, they got nada. Goose egg. Zilch.

There has been no substantive police reform, and virtually every jurisdiction that defunded has backpedaled on that and then some, with Democrats doing everything possible to distance themselves from the defund rhetoric they openly admit hurt them in 2020 congressional elections.

BLM's polling is underwater and the Biden administration won't take their calls. The opportunity in the wake of George Floyd's murder has been wasted and meaningful criminal justice reform is likely dead for years. Why do you think the result will be different for abortion?

civiqs.com/results/black_… BLM was up 24 points after Floyd, and they blew that much political capital without getting anything done. Now their entire approval bump from Floyd is gone, their disapproval is higher than it's ever been, and there's few undecideds left to win over.

The net result of summer 2020, in the long term, has simply been to take about 10-15% undecideds and convert them into dedicated opposition. The political malpractice here is unbelievable. They were up 24 POINTS, and they blew it, got NOTHING, and made their brand radioactive.

Now bear in mind how much worse the current circumstances are for a similar summer of rioting than they were in 2020: Trump is no longer in office, we're not in lockdown, anger about the economy is mostly aimed at Democrats.

The ingredients for the public to tolerate a boiling over of anger at the Republicans into street violence are no longer present, nor can abortion protesters expect every major corporation to line up in lockstep endorsing them and promising donations, DeSantis saw to that.

plus, it's only been two years since the last explosion, and it's still a raw wound. You can't do this every election year! Certainly not while still running on outrage over 1/6, which was basically the same thing, a mob trying to forcibly change a vote in the halls of power.

The left must ask ourselves for the next six months, about every course of action we intend to undertake, "will this help to elect Democrats in November?". And this will not. Another summer of rioting, violence, and apologism for the same will have the opposite effect.