Democrats have grappled with the issue of police for a few years now. Black Lives Matter is a group that largely supports the Democrat party. Democrats tend to throw bones to their radical supporters a lot because they tend to do the most activism and rally voters more than moderate Dems, or so they seem to think.
So Democrats have played footsie with movements that call to partially or fully defund police, or “abolish” them altogether. Joe Biden has claimed he’s not for defunding the police himself, although, during the 2020 presidential campaign, he and Kamala Harris were very supportive of protesters for the Black Lives Matter movement.
Many of those protests turned into violent destructive riots, although many did not.
Many did not think U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) would run for re-election. But she is, and now she wants to clarify that the position of her party is not to defund the police. Many moderate voters have started voting Republican such as in Virginia.
With mid-terms approaching, Democrats are getting nervous and starting to try to cater to those moderates instead of the more radical wing of their party. This is one issue many may bring up with having just a two-party system.
Many different groups often fall under one or the other and they don’t always get along. Pelosi too to ABC’s George Stephanopoulus to issue the decree:
After speaking about her views on the Russian conflict and then inflation, she went on to comment about the taboo topic of how or if to support police here in the U.S.
Stephanopoulus asked: “how do you think Democrats should address rising crime…?”
Pelosi: “Well with all the respect in the world for Cori Bush, that is not the position of the Democratic party. Community safety to protect and defend in every way is our oath of office. We’re all concerned about mistreatment of people and that’s why Karen Bass had the “justice in policing act” and we would hope to get some of that done, whether it’s no knock, or chokehold, or some of those issues, even if we can’t get it all done. But make no mistake, community safety is our responsibility.” Watch:
Democrats will try to claim that this has always been their position. But many may claim this is an about-face. Pelosi herself said “people will do what they do” when asked about rioters ripping down historical monuments in the United States for example. Now we just have to see how the attention span of voters holds up as elections loom in the future. Read more:
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