Archive for the ‘Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’ Category

The Biden campaign won’t like this CNN news article. That’s because it’s reporting the results of some focus groups from several battleground states. Let’s just say that, despite what the polls say, Joe Biden isn’t in the great shape CNN, MSNBC, the Washington Post and the NYTimes want you to believe.

According to the article, Rich Thau, the man who’s moderated the focus groups, wrote “Pollsters are consistently telling us Democratic nominee Joe Biden is far ahead. I’m not looking to pick a fight, as their sample sizes are much larger than mine. That said, as a focus group moderator, I’m hearing strong support for President Donald Trump from a critical sliver of the electorate.”

Then Thau explains his results:

And, each month for the past 17 months, I’ve had a unique window into the Americans largely responsible for giving the president his slim Electoral College victory: so-called “Obama-Trump” swing voters across the upper Midwest.

Our Swing Voter Project has uncovered that many of these people, who live in places such as Canton, Ohio; Davenport, Iowa; Erie, Pennsylvania; and Macomb County, Michigan, prefer Trump over Biden. In fact, 22 of 33 respondents in these four most recent locations feel this way.

And over the first year of the project, from March 2019 through February 2020, more than two-thirds of the “Obama-Trump” voters said they would take Trump over Obama in a hypothetical match-up.

That isn’t good news for the Biden campaign. This is worse news:

Additionally, many of these voters have yet to hear Biden make his case, and some may still be impacted by the economic and health consequences of the pandemic.

CNN, MSNBC and other media outlets have given Biden a pass on campaigning, often saying that his strategy is working. That’s BS. These media outlets aren’t pushing him on this because they’re fully aware that Biden would turn into a puddle the minute he’s asked hard-hitting questions by legitimate reporters. There’s no way Biden can appear on Special Report or Outnumbered Overtime. Bret Baier and Harris Faulkner would be respectful but they wouldn’t let him off the hook like other networks.

Voters understand that these networks are essentially the Propaganda Wing of the DNC. Voters understand that the networks aren’t serious journalists. Notice that CNN and MSNBC haven’t invited Biden on to discuss his unity agreement. They could announce Biden’s appearance on Morning Joe, then invite people to send in their questions via Twitter and Facebook. There’s a reason they haven’t done that. It’s because Biden’s answers would become material for President Trump’s advertising campaign. It’s because Biden’s words would expose him as a Sanders-AOC leftist.

Now that the people see President Trump’s lengthy list of mainstream accomplishments, they can compare his accomplishments with Obama’s trash-talking and his lengthy list of failures, especially on exporting manufacturing jobs to China, intentionally crippling the fossil fuel industry and decimating small towns throughout the Rust Belt and Great Lakes states.

People in Macomb County, MI, get it that President Trump’s economic agenda was restoring communities and rebuilding the middle class. People living there get it that President Obama and the Democrats shipped their jobs to China and Mexico through NAFTA, high taxes and regulations. Then there’s this problem:

Biden isn’t mentally fit to be president. He’s a smiling face with a history of being a nice guy and a moderate Democrat. He isn’t a moderate Democrat anymore. He sold his soul to the devil, aka Bernie and AOC, to become the nominee. He’s now a captive of the hate- and rage-filled left. Anyone that thinks that Biden can frequently forget where he is but still win over voters in swing states is kidding themselves. Couple that with the fact that he’s promising to end fracking. There goes Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan.

I’ve said for a month that Democrats are touting polling because they know their nominee is a feeble-minded old fart who belongs in a nursing home, not in a presidential debate. Democrats hitched their wagon to Biden because he wasn’t as insane as Bernie and some of the other Democrat hopefuls. Rush put it best when he told Chris Wallace months ago that Biden has the best shot of all the Democrats to defeat Trump before saying that Biden doesn’t have a shot.

Kim Strassel’s Potomac Watch column nails it in terms of the presidential campaign. She wrote “The headlines of late proceed from the premise that Joe Biden is on a glide path to the White House. Stories highlight polls showing President Trump losing key swing states, even GOP strongholds. Texas is in play! Georgia is at risk! Journalists explain that Mr. Biden is banking money, while the Trump campaign’s leadership team is in chaos. They feature congressional race trackers, who rate more Republicans as vulnerable. All that’s left is for Jill Biden to pick the curtains.”

Let’s stop this stupidity this instant. Joe Biden is proposing to destroy the fossil fuel economy but fossil fuel-rich Texas is in play? That’s a joke and then some. This article says it all: “Biden’s liberal climate policies feared by unions in Pennsylvania.”

If Biden’s climate change policies worry union bosses in Pennsylvania, which Trump won by 44,000 votes, what’s the likelihood that Trump’s in danger of losing Texas, which he won by 807,000 votes? Does Trump have an enthusiasm problem in Texas? I wouldn’t bet on it.

Mr. Biden is promising to delete the jobs of millions of Americans—at a time of soaring unemployment. A study by the National Ocean Industries Association finds that a ban on offshore drilling alone would cost 200,000 jobs, damaging regional economies. Mr. Biden would overrun the nation with solar panels, wind turbines and charging stations. Basic consumer choice would disappear for vehicles, dishwashers, even homes. The Justice Department would become a weapon against businessmen who run afoul of fast-changing progressive standards.

That will be a huge issue in battleground states this fall. It won’t be the biggest issue, though. Riots and “Defund the Police” will be the biggest issue. COVID will be important, just not as important as Defund. People have worries about COVID but they’ve learned to live with the risk. They’re frightened about the riots and Defund the Police. Outside elderly neighborhoods, COVID isn’t that big of a worry.

Every neighborhood is threatened by Defund the Police. Either that or they know someone who’s threatened by defunding police departments. Further, Joe Biden is on the wrong side of the Defund issue. Yes, Chris Wallace, Biden did say that he’s for defunding the police:

Hint: redirecting money away from police departments is defunding. It’s just using a different word. The effect is still the same.

The Trump White House used the week to lay out a competing vision. At a UPS facility in Georgia Wednesday, the president announced a “top-to-bottom overhaul” of the federal environmental review process, which stands in the way of nearly every infrastructure project in the country. Transformation of that permitting regime would clear the way for new highways, ports, bridges, pipelines and tunnels. That would create millions of jobs, attract more business to America and make the country more competitive. “Biden wants to massively re-regulate the energy economy,” Mr. Trump said, drawing the contrast. “We want to get things built.”

In other words, President Trump wants to make life better faster. Biden wants to listen to AOC’s and Bernie’s socialist instructions. That’s the fast-track to a lost decade.

We lost a decade of economic growth during the Obama administration. We’d experience worse economic growth during a Biden-Sanders-AOC administration. In fact, we’d likely experience a major recession during a Biden-AOC-Sanders administration.

Derek Hunter’s Townhall article is titled “Liberal’s All-Out Assault On Free Speech” is a frightening assault on the English language. Frankly, it’s sloppy and incorrect. Hunter wrote “While the “conservatives” at the time were the ones imposing penalties on speech, it’s now the liberals seeking to do the same, and worse. The idea of criminalizing so-called “hate speech” has been popular with college-aged liberals for a while now. While normal people laughed at those stupid college kids needing safe spaces when someone was on campus saying things they didn’t agree with and requiring “trigger warnings” before engaging in normal human conversations on subject that might cause them to need a diaper change, liberals were busy looking for an opportunity to use this childishness to their advantage. They found it…by becoming them.”

The people “imposing penalties on speech” aren’t liberals. They’re progressives. There’s a world of difference between liberals and progressives. Democrats like Hubert Humphrey and Daniel Patrick Moynihan were liberal policywise but their liberalism had a healthy libertarian streak to it. Today’s progressives, like AOC, Adam Schiff or any Antifa/BLM member, have a fascist streak running through them.

We can’t defeat progressivism or the Cancel Culture if we aren’t properly identifying them. Cancel Culture’s fascism and BLM’s Marxism have totalitarian underpinnings to them. They aren’t interested in compromise, principled or otherwise. They’re interested in domination and total victory. Antifa ‘warriors’ often sound tougher than they are but their principle tactic is intimidation. In this instance, they ran into police prepared to deal with their intimidation:

These aren’t liberal protesters getting chased. They’re fascist thugs attempting to disrupt and potentially demolish a city. In this case, they were trying to destroy Portland, OR. This time, the fascists lost.

What we call them determine what weapons and tactics are required for the situation. Against fascists, I know that I’m not changing hearts and minds. My highest priority is protecting myself. That means we should think in terms of getting into a street fight. That means becoming a hardened target. Once we’re operating with that mindset, we’re properly prepared for the fight at hand.

Jason Lewis debated Paul Wellstone often. At the end of the debate, they’d compliment each other for the good points they’d made. Antifa sees that as a sign of weakness. Lewis vs. Wellstone is like Psalm 23, which says “Yea, though I walk through the Valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil, for Thou art with me.” The Street Version of Psalm 23 goes like this: “Yea, though I walk through the Valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil because I’m the biggest, baddest SOB in the valley.”

Saying that Democrats have gone wild with their Biden-Sanders economic plan is understatement. The first topic covered in the Biden-Sanders plan is climate change. It might as well have been written by AOC. It’s that radical:

To reach net-zero emissions as rapidly as possible, Democrats commit to eliminating carbon pollution from power plants by 2035 through technology-neutral standards for clean energy and energy efficiency. We will dramatically expand solar and wind energy deployment through community-based and utility-scale systems. Within five years, we will install 500 million solar panels, including eight million solar roofs and community solar energy systems, and 60,000 made-in-America wind turbines.

The first question I’d have is a simple one. Who’s going to pay for this transformation? In the next paragraph, we get the answer:

Democrats believe that any clean energy infrastructure project financed with federal support, including through the tax code, should come with robust wage and labor requirements. We will build a modern electric grid by investing in interstate transmission projects and advanced, 21st century grid technologies to power communities with clean electricity, including federal support to build sustainable and resilient energy grids in rural America and in tribal areas lacking energy infrastructure. We will reduce methane pollution through robust federal standards and targeted support for repairing and replacing aging distribution systems, which will create hundreds of thousands of jobs, including for the same pipefitters, insulators, and other workers who built the systems in the first place and who know best how to protect our communities from methane pollution.

We the People won’t have a vote on this boondoggle other than this November. The Biden-Bernie brothers will decide since they’re our betters. This is radicalism on steroids:

This means the elimination of fossil fuels. How do you think coal miners in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana will feel about that? Also, that’s the end of mining in the United States because they rely on cheap, reliable fossil fuels. The Virginia pipeline has already been cancelled due to uncertainty.

The things I’ve written about were found on the first 3 pages of the Biden-Bernie Unity Document. It’s a 110-page document. I will be going through the rest of the document and posting the highlights over the rest of the week. I suspect this will be a multi-part series.

Anyone that wants to live in the Squad’s America is beyond stupid. Yesterday, they announced that they’d introduce the BREATHE Act. These ingrates are serious about passing this legislation. If you’re wondering what’s in the BREATHE Act, I’ll tell you.

According to the article, the BREATHE Act “would radically transform the nation’s criminal justice system by eliminating life sentences, retroactively expunging drug crimes, shutting down multiple federal agencies and permanently closing prisons and immigration detention centers, among other agenda items.” Among the federal agencies that they’re attempting to shut down are the DEA and ICE. (Perhaps you’ve heard of them?)

At the Democrats’ press availability, Ilhan Omar said that criminal justice reform isn’t enough:

“We can’t stop at criminal justice reform or policing reform,” she said during an outdoor press conference. “We are not merely fighting to tear down the systems of oppression in the criminal justice system. We are fighting to tear down systems of oppression that exist in housing, in education, in health care, in employment, [and] in the air we breathe.”

What Ilhan Omar is describing isn’t the United States that the Founding Fathers fought for. Sen. John Kennedy, (R-LA), put it best:

.@SenJohnKennedy, national treasure, on the BLM plans to eradicate police and close prisons: “It is clearly a serious effort to compete in the Woke Olympics. I would give it 9.7….The only way I know how to improve their bill is with the shredder.” (1/2) pic.twitter.com/Iy1FjVfeQi

— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) July 8, 2020

Growing up, I was taught that America was “the land of the free and the home of the brave.” If Biden, Pelosi and Schumer are running things, neither of those things will be true. Biden has said that he wants to transform America. Into what, Joe? This?

Let’s be emphatic about this. Until now, people haven’t talked forthrightly about Joe Biden’s mental instability. I won’t make that mistake. On his best day, Joe Biden is hard-pressed to tell the difference between a Friday in November or a Monday in July. If elected, he’d become the first president removed via the Twenty-Fifth Amendment. That wasn’t a question. That’s a prediction. Watch this, then tell me I’m wrong:

Ummm…. ?

He has zero clue what he’s saying.pic.twitter.com/xbgIpjyIvb

— Jenna Ellis (@JennaEllisEsq) July 8, 2020

Eight seconds into this video, Biden’s eyes glaze over. He doesn’t know what he’s saying anymore. And that’s reading from a teleprompter! That’s frightening. It’s time for Republicans to stop playing nice. This isn’t a friendly debate over tax policy or education. This is a fight to make sure that the next president isn’t a puppet of the Squad.

Joe Biden used to be a failed politician. Surrounded by Bernie Sanders, the Squad and Chuck Schumer, he’d be a puppet of BLM. within 3 years, the United States wouldn’t be a constitutional republic anymore.

According to Rashida Tlaib, Democrats “it is critical that we listen to and trust the leadership of Black activists around the country.” She continued, saying “They’ve been on the front lines in defense of Black lives for decades, and it is our responsibility as legislators to hear them, respect them and follow their example.”

Let’s correct that to the Don Lemon definition. According to Lemon, “The Black Lives Matter movement was started because it was talking about police brutality. If you want an all Black Lives Matter movement that talks about gun violence in communities, including Black communities, then start that movement with that name. That’s not what Black Lives Matter is about. It’s not all-encompassing.”

Democrats are trying to have it both ways by playing word games. To the public, they’re saying black lives matter. To the activists, Democrats are saying that the Black Lives Matter organization matters. Democrats are exposed as dividers because they’ve booed former Democrat presidential candidate Martin O’Malley for saying that all lives matter:

Democratic presidential candidate Martin O’Malley apologized on Saturday for saying “All lives matter” while discussing police violence against African-Americans with liberal demonstrators.

Several dozen demonstrators interrupted the former Maryland governor while he was speaking here at the Netroots Nation conference, a gathering of liberal activists, demanding that he address criminal justice and police brutality. When they shouted, “Black lives matter!” a rallying cry of protests that broke out after several black Americans were killed at the hands of police in recent months, O’Malley responded: “Black lives matter. White lives matter. All lives matter.”

It’s apparent that Democrats are doing whatever it takes to get African-American voters excited about Joe Biden. The Democrats insist that African-American voters catapulted Biden to the nomination. That’s true with an asterisk. Biden was stumbling and in danger of being forced out of the race.

James Clyburn endorsed him right before the South Carolina Primary. Biden went from being in danger to winning the primary. Without Clyburn’s endorsement, Biden wouldn’t be the nominee. Period.

As for paying attention to the activists, that’s a small strip of voters. Paying attention to all the voters might yield a bigger turnout though it wouldn’t help push Rep. Tlaib’s radical anti-police agenda. If Democrats see that strategy as a winner, they need to visit an optometrist. This isn’t a winner for Democrats with Tlaib, AOC, Ilhan Omar and Ayanna Pressley pushing the issue.

Biden is supposed to be the leader of the party but the Squad is dictating the Democrats’ policies. Democrats are a house divided. The Democrats’ activist wing confidently wants radical change. The Democrats’ establishment wing timidly wants ‘Squad lite’. Republicans simply want to protect communities, especially children.

Saying that this election hinges on taming the various mobs (Black Lives Matter, Antifa and Justice Democrats) while jumpstarting the economy. That requires mental toughness, agility in messaging and the willingness to proverbially cut the Democrats’ heart out. Anyone that’s watched what’s happened to babies through teenagers in Chicago and thinks that the mob can be dealt with isn’t paying attention. That’s just stupid thinking. Anyone that’s watched what’s happened in Minneapolis, specifically along Lake Street, and still thinks that this election isn’t a street fight is kidding themselves.

Antifa, BLM and the Justice Democrats have Biden right where they want him. He isn’t capable of putting 2 straight sentences together, which means that Democrats can push him to do whatever they want him to do. What they want him to do is be a trojan horse, someone that looks harmless at first, then transforms into society’s worst nightmare.

For instance, the Justice Democrats state on their website that “Justice Democrats is working to elect a mission-driven caucus in Congress that will fight for solutions that match the scale of our many crises: skyrocketing inequality, catastrophic climate change, deepening structural racism as the country becomes more diverse, and the corporate takeover of our democracy.”

That isn’t all the Justice Democrats say. Here’s more:

We need a Democratic Party that fights for its voters, not its corporate donors. That’s why we helped elect leaders like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Congress. We need leadership in the Democratic Party that will represent and fight for our communities.

After NYC cut $1,000,000,000 from the NYPD budget last night, AOC said this:

Defunding police means defunding police. It does not mean budget tricks or funny math. It does not mean moving school police officers from the NYPD budget to the Department of Education’s budget so the exact same police remain in schools.”

The Resistance isn’t disappearing. It’s getting stronger. If thoughtful people of all political stripes don’t recognize this, they should be ostracized. The Democrats’ political hacks, like Donna Brazile, Marie Harf and Jessica Tarlov can assure us that Democrats don’t want to defund police departments all they want. They’re either lying or they’re just stupid.

I don’t buy the notion that they’re stupid. They know that police forces are funded at the municipal level, not the federal level. It doesn’t matter what Pelosi or Jim Clyburn or Joe Biden says on the subject. The voices that matter are the voices of people most voters haven’t heard of. People like Lisa Bender and Jeremiah Ellison have infinitely more say in police budget matters.

It isn’t a stretch to say that the Justice Democrats essentially run the Democrat Party. They just took out Elliot Abrams in a primary. They almost beat Amy McGrath in Kentucky’s primary. Here’s their entire list of candidates.

This isn’t the time for nitpicking. It’s the time to fight like hell. Idiots like Mitt Romney should be criticized for supporting Black Lives Matter. Did Mitt even know that BLM’s co-founders admitted that they were “trained Marxists”?

Wake up Mitt. This isn’t some innocent organization. They’ll rip your heart out, too, after they’ve used you. You’re just a useful idiot that they’ll use on their way to achieving power that will lead to the overthrow of this constitutional republic.

Politicians, it’s time to set aside the partisanship. It’s time for everyone to put America first. To Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Jim Clyburn and other Democrats, it’s time to set aside the partisanship that’s been part of your system. Sit down in good faith with Tim Scott and negotiate a principled compromise with him. If Van Jones can work with Jared Kushner on the police reform executive order, then it’s certainly possible for you to negotiate in good faith.

If you can’t do that, then just step aside. Let others who can work in good faith finish this legislation. It’s time to fix what’s broken. Americans have the right to safety. Eliminate the idiotic ideas about eliminating police departments. Tell the activists who want deep cuts in police department budgets to take a hike. The vast, vast majority of Americans want that for their kids and expect that from their politicians.

If you won’t do what’s right, we’ll find people who will. You think that you’re irreplaceable? I’m telling you that you’re only essential if you do what’s right for the people.

It’s long past time to tell Democrat media hacks like Jessica Tarlov, Marie Harf and Donna Brazile to shut up about what the ‘Defund the Police’ movement is or isn’t about. Tarlov, Harf and Brazile are Democrat establishment hacks waging a public fight against the Bernie Bros/BLM/Antifa/AOC activist wing of the Democratic Party. The truth is that Democrats are split on this from a PR standpoint. Democrats aren’t split on this from a policy standpoint.

Bill de Blasio is the worst big city mayor in America. He wants to cut $1,000,000,000 from NYPD’s $6,000,000,000 police budget while “gun violence has surged across the Big Apple.” De Blasio insists that “We can do this, we can strike the balance, we can keep this city safe.”

Of course, that doesn’t match with reality, which is normal with de Blasio:

The violence continued across the city over the weekend as eleven people were shot in less than 12 hours Saturday night into Sunday night, including in Brooklyn, The Bronx, Queens and Manhattan.

The key to preventing crime is … reducing the numbers of officers on the street? If de Blasio had been alive when they made the Wizard of Oz, he might’ve gotten cast as the Scarecrow even without an audition:

“We have caved to the mob in a moment we know will come back to haunt us,” Councilman Joe Borelli (R-Staten Island) told The Post. “The mayor is smart enough to know that these actions will create a more violent environment in New York. “This is what you get when you have government-by-hashtag,” he added.

Borelli’s counterpart from Queens, Councilman Robert Holden, echoed the complaints. “I’m against wholesale cuts based on protest signs,” the Middle Village Democrat said. “One billion dollars is an arbitrary number that the mayor and some of my colleagues are trying to reach to appease the masses without considering public safety.”

De Blasio insists that this is part of his reform package. That’s BS. There aren’t any reforms in this proposal. The only thing that’s happening is de Blasio caving to BLM, Antifa and AOC.

Defunding the police is happening in too many places for Democrats to ignore. LA, NYC, Seattle, Portland and Chicago are cutting their budgets. Minneapolis wants to eliminate their police department entirely. Since PD budgets are set locally, Democrat hacks like Tarlov, Harf, Brazile and Biden can say whatever they want. Their voices are irrelevant.

The voices that matter are the activists’ voices (#BlackLivesMatter, Antifa) and the de facto leaders of the Democrats (AOC, Ilhan Omar, Lisa Bender and Jeremiah Ellison).

There’s little argument that Democrats and anarchists want to abolish cities’ police departments. If anyone wants to figure out what a police-free society looks like, they needn’t look farther than Seattle. This is the future that Minneapolis shop owners can look forward to:

Antifa is now extorting local business owners in the Seattle autonomous zone. Of course they are. pic.twitter.com/IxcYnfjRAc

— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) June 10, 2020

Let these words sink in: “Antifa is now extorting local business owners in the Seattle autonomous zone.” Let these words sink in, too: “Clearly the governor and the city’s mayor plan to let this insurrection continue.” That means that Gov. Inslee either agrees with the anarchists or he’s too spineless to confront the anarchists.

Like Minneapolis, Seattle is a hotbed for anarchists, Antifa, Black Lives Matter and other far-far left extremists that even too far left for Bernie Sanders. When you’re too insane for Bernie, that’s out there. At the start of this week, Pelosi et al insisted that they weren’t interested in abolishing and defunding police departments. Check out how Pelosi tries dodging that question:

She looks as nervous as the proverbial long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. It isn’t difficult to figure out why she’s nervous. This issue might kill her majority. It’s difficult to say ‘we won’t abolish police departments when Seattle and Minneapolis are voting to abolish their police departments and NYC and LA are cutting funding to their police departments.

Like the Bible says, a house divided against itself cannot stand. I don’t know how Democrats could be more divided than they currently are. The possible exception might be 1968, when Democrats tore themselves apart:

Now that’s a house divided. That November, that house fell.

Gov. Inslee is a wimp who hasn’t protected his people. Why should Seattle residents put up with these anarchists and terrorists? Bonus question: can you picture a Biden administration standing up to those terrorists? I can’t. That’s like picturing woke Democrats embracing sports teams like the Atlanta Braves, Cleveland Indians and the Washington Redskins. That’s like a Wisconsin politician surviving after saying he hates the Green Bay Packers as much as he hates cheese.

The fact is that DC Democrats have a huge fight on their hands. The establishment keeps saying no while Seattle and Minneapolis keep saying ‘burn it down.’ These aren’t issues that the DC Establishment Democrats want to fight over. They’d rather just sweep the issue under the rug. In a pure power play, AOC is telling Pelosi that AOC is the spiritual leader of the Democratic Party.

Ed Morrissey’s post about Pelosi’s Democrats getting nervous about the #DefundThePolice movement highlights something that’s fairly uncommon — an essential program that Democrats won’t invest in. Along with investing in the military, it’s painfully obvious that Democrats don’t put a high priority on keeping people safe. The reason I mention this is because we’re about to get into a debate about whether Democrats intend to defund police department or whether they want to abolish them altogether. It’s a phony argument that Republicans shouldn’t engage in.

The best approach Republicans can take is to propose reforms aimed at strengthening police forces, increasing officer accountability and improving the police forces’ image within minority communities. That can’t happen without buy-in from white officers. That can’t happen until all officers are trained to report officer wrongdoing. Honestly, it’ll take a culture change in some police forces, starting in Minneapolis.

While the conversation is happening in DC, the changes must happen in the communities. While that sounds like a contradictory statement, it isn’t. Opening a debate in DC simply means putting ideas on the table. It doesn’t mean legislation getting written, bills getting passed or presidential signing ceremonies. It’s indisputable that “states are the laboratories for democracy.” In this instance, swap out states, then plug in cities. Why shouldn’t we have a nationwide debate? Think of it as a brainstorming session that everyone’s invited to. What’s more unifying than saying that everyone’s invited?

Lisa Bender likely won’t attend the brainstorming session. She thinks that having the ability to call the police in the middle of the night when a burglar is breaking in is a form of privilege:

Let’s see how willing Democrats are to engage in reforming the police and the unions that protect bad cops. Let’s see if they’re willing to push back against the AOC wing of their party. (I’m betting that they’re too cowardly for that.) Let’s see if Democrats will say that police officers make communities better, knowing that the AOC wing is ready for a revolution over this.

Don’t be surprised if Jacob Frey is defeated, then replaced by Jeremiah Ellison. But I digress. Democrats are fighting a civil war that’s going to get nasty. The establishment isn’t moderate but they play nasty. The question is whether the main battle will happen before the election. That’s what happened in 1968. Will it happen after Trump leaves office in 2025? Clinton didn’t rise until Republicans kept the White House for 3 terms.

Democrats know that they’re in trouble on this. Part of the Democrats want nothing to do with talking about law enforcement whatsoever. The activist wing of the Democratic Party runs the party. That’s why Biden hired AOC to be the co-chair of his advisory committee on climate change. He’s trying to unify a badly divided party.

It isn’t a matter of whether the Democrats will ‘come home’ in November. It’s that Republicans are already united and working on winning over persuadable voters. One of the things that’ll help Republicans win over those voters is the Democrats’ proposal to defund or abolish police departments.