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Rep. Jim Clyburn says Dem Senate challenger "Jaime Harrison started to plateau when 'Defund the Police' showed up on TV right across his head"
- Thread starter Richiek
- Start date
I agree.
I get the anger because it is bullshit that Americans are being killed by their own government because of the color of their skin. But the slogan is so bad that it is used as a talking point by the other side and it can be effective.
The Repubs are good enough at coming up with bullshit names or slogans that can paint anything in a negative light. We shouldn't be helping them.
This.
"Police reform" has continually resulted in the continued murder of BIPOC for *decades* because any shitty, no good reform qualifies for it.
Era is OH SO brave when it comes to defunding the military but starts clutching pearls when defunding the police comes up.
Same bullshit as the discussion around socialism. We let centrists and the right control the discourse and water down the message, so we get watered down results.
God fucking dammit. And yet people are claiming in the other thread the Dems aren't punching left. Fucking stop it dude, you got Biden in the White House, what is this obsession with tearing down people of your own party in a not even constructive way. Jaime Harrison did fucking wonders in a state that is astonishingly red.
Certainly it's more important to wring one's hands about a slogan instead of taking money away from fascist pigs.
Certainly it's more important to wring one's hands about a slogan instead of taking money away from fascist pigs.
Except, "Public Option" is more favorable across the spectrum than M4A.
Duck, progressives, here comes that bus. You know, that one that never fails to show up. (Always right after an election is won--or lost.)
What literal horseshit of a graph. I need to know who produced it so I can discount whatever shit they produce forever.
Well color me surprised lol I guess it's the total opposite again lol. Well I guess then public option is a much more simple message than m4a lol
Except, "Public Option" is more favorable across the spectrum than M4A.
Are you saying that Clyburn is self-hating? He represents one of the more rural Black districts in the country.
It wasn't a message that lost the SC senate race. Apparently SC voters preferred a spineless, Trump sycophant. That's it. Stop attacking within the party and create a lock-in-step blue wall that will not break ranks.
In what world can you not expect your enemy to use what they can against you? Attacks ads shouldn't be anything new for someone running for Congress. You should be able to fend off such framing and counter them. If the argument here from Clyburn is that activist should just shut up with their demands them I'm afraid that's not gonna ever happen lol
This is silly. Harrison just hit the ceiling for what a Democrat could actually do in this election in South Carolina. No Dem anywhere in the country was able to outperform Biden by more than a few points, and the vast majority underperformed him, regardless of ideology. It's just polarization. No one who was a gettable voter in South Carolina believed Jamie Harrison was going to abolish the police. There were just too many ungettable voters in an electorate flooded with Trumpers. Harrison could have brought AOC down to Charleston and had her tell everyone that Jamie Harrison had personally convinced her of the errors of socialism while she waved a thin blue line flag and it wouldn't have done anything.
If there was a tactical error in the election, it was, unfortunately, probably the choice to take covid seriously enough that we didn't do in-person canvassing. Voters just didn't reward that, and you lost the benefits of canvassing for nothing. That was probably the road to turning out some number of non-voters who would've supported Harrison and countered some of the Trump turnout surge, more than any ideological message would have.
If there was a tactical error in the election, it was, unfortunately, probably the choice to take covid seriously enough that we didn't do in-person canvassing. Voters just didn't reward that, and you lost the benefits of canvassing for nothing. That was probably the road to turning out some number of non-voters who would've supported Harrison and countered some of the Trump turnout surge, more than any ideological message would have.
This.
Clyburn may or may not be on the mark. But "Defund the Police" is just a bad rallying cry if you're trying to win enough votes.
thank you for this unbiased research from Kaiser Permanente
Except, "Public Option" is more favorable across the spectrum than M4A.
How it usually goes when it comes to black people in this country:
People have been telling black activists how to protest for 150 years
Moderates are censuring Black Lives Matter, just as they did with Abolitionism and Civil Rights
timeline.com
You see, it's just a simple messaging problem to explain the last forever generations of black people getting shit on.
Just a messaging problem on the part of black people.
It's a terrible slogan but the Rs are succeeding at defining you that way then it's on you to prove them wrong.
if the Rs messaging is working, you need better messaging! Whining about it after the fact is weak and pointless.
campaigns in any swing race are not cookie cutter, some attacks stick and its hard to escape imagery on a national scale... this is part of keeping a big tent party. while defund the police didnt cause jamie to lose, it definitely didn't help in a race where we needed everything to go right.
It's seems reductionist to blame the loss all on that slogan. Obviously defund the police doesn't mean eliminate the police, but so many people were fearful and irrational that the slogan on top of everything else was too much. I think the slogan is fine and when people are thinking straight and not overwhelmed with so much else it'll make sense to them too. It would be better if Clyburn and others who share the same viewpoint in the party tried to explain the slogan rather than undermine the message.
I agree it's a poor slogan but blaming a dem loss in South Carolina on it is kind of bullshit. I think if you had a reasonable discussion with someone and said the police are burdened with too many things they shouldn't be responsible for handling, most would agree. If you ball all that up into a slogan like "Defund the Police" , it sounds like you're advocating for abolishing police entirely which will never go over well.
Framing it as something like 'Help our Police' (not that I'm arguing that be a new phrasing) could convey the same message without being 'scary' to the average uninformed layperson.
Framing it as something like 'Help our Police' (not that I'm arguing that be a new phrasing) could convey the same message without being 'scary' to the average uninformed layperson.
Ok you go find a better one that shows that running on left-leaning policies causes vote share to go down
e: If you actually care, it's a study commissioned by the Justice Dems
Is he serious??
Defund the police became a thing in the summer, Harrison didn't start gaining on Graham until October, then plummeted when Diane "civility" Feinstein gave a big old hug to Lindsey for the best hearing ever on ACB
Moderates are fucking divorced from reality dude.
Defund the police became a thing in the summer, Harrison didn't start gaining on Graham until October, then plummeted when Diane "civility" Feinstein gave a big old hug to Lindsey for the best hearing ever on ACB
Moderates are fucking divorced from reality dude.
Also, you're fucking kidding yourself if you think this had anything to do with Harrison losing.
You really think the difference between someone choosing Harrison over Graham was defunding the police, as opposed to other CORE differences between the two?
You really think the difference between someone choosing Harrison over Graham was defunding the police, as opposed to other CORE differences between the two?
In a country where half the population are scared of their own shadow and vote for a strongman I don't think there's any room for nuance in the message. Either you want to engage with people who have legitimate complaints or you don't.
"Defund the police? That's crazy dangerous! I'm gonna vote for a mask off racist party with an authoritarian megalomaniac leader that causes civil unrest! Much safer"
Are you saying black people are a monolith that don't care about class issues at all such as the pharma industry lining this rep's pockets?
A bit tough when primetime fox talks about candidates taking your hamburgers/guns/etc.
so, jamie didn't even run on defund the police, but it hurt him?
so basically people can't support life saving police reform or push for it, in the streets or in politics, because it'll hurt centtrists - who dont even support it in the first place?
top tier gaslighting.
so basically people can't support life saving police reform or push for it, in the streets or in politics, because it'll hurt centtrists - who dont even support it in the first place?
top tier gaslighting.
I agree 'defund the police' is a bad slogan cus it's too vague. 'Abolish the police' cuts directly to what the real goal is. It was what it started as originally when many liberals started to complain that it didn't meet their consumer brained branding and sloganeering criteria. So now it's 'defund the police' which is a weaker slogan that doesn't cause centrists immediate panic they still complain and they were never going to stop complaining until BLM is a weak soft milquetoast voter registration effort that says #NotAllCops.
Abolish the Police. Let the centrists cry. Same kind of people who cried about 'black power' being too militant for their liking.
Abolish the Police. Let the centrists cry. Same kind of people who cried about 'black power' being too militant for their liking.
Yep. Always the same shit.
Same fuckwads blaming Black Lives Matter back in 2014 too
Defund the police are demands from activists not an electoral strategy
After Clyburn was on CNN talking about some dems being conservative, i was happy to see Jake Tapper come out in support of AOC and talked about how good he thinks she is.
I agree this is a much better slogan than defund the police.
But name me one rep that lost because they had a policy of "defund the police"
Doesn't have to be to still get branded by it by your opponent.
Something about this is exhausting in that what protesters want is not necessarily what the Democrats say anyway, and Clyburn conflating the two is just going to make disentangling this harder. He could easily have emphasized Biden's response to the question or even Jacob Frey's when protesters in Minneapolis confronted him with defunding the police. He could also have done everyone some service in fighting the misinformation surrounding "defund" (in that it often means "rightsize" or significantly reform) instead of letting it rest. If the Democrats are not comfortable with that rhetoric, then they explain what they do want. I remember Max Rose's ads about how he did not want to defund the police, which did not leave me with an understanding as a television viewer of what he wanted in return.
Yes, it's true that the DSA and super-progressive faction needs to realize that they aren't the only people in the blue team! But I also think they know that: I don't remember them primarying Donna Shalala or Rose here. I don't remember Ocasio-Cortez eschewing bridge-building unity efforts with the Biden campaign over the Green New Deal. Very often, they are not going out of their way to spoil districts. I question if the Blue Dog group and the older leadership is going to recognize they have to grapple with the new left in return, and these early comments are not encouraging.
There's a lot of what the Democrats can't do or can't be (I'm not a socialist, I'm not AOC, I'm not Ilhan). Cool, alright, but that doesn't really help voters, not least sympathetic voters who don't activate because they don't see anything to vote for, to understand what they are. If they are going to wilt at the face of Republican misinformation over what they really are and what they want, well.
Republicans are going to say whatever they're going to say. They don't need the DSA to call the blue team socialists or police haters. They did that to Barack Obama, who tried to triangulate during part of his presidency and held a beer summit over police brutality of all things. So maybe Democratic consultants could earn their salaries by shaping a message that will resist at least some of this misinformation instead of sitting there passively whining about it, and then attacking some of their own members over it. Because voters can also tell when a team is not playing like one.
Yes, it's true that the DSA and super-progressive faction needs to realize that they aren't the only people in the blue team! But I also think they know that: I don't remember them primarying Donna Shalala or Rose here. I don't remember Ocasio-Cortez eschewing bridge-building unity efforts with the Biden campaign over the Green New Deal. Very often, they are not going out of their way to spoil districts. I question if the Blue Dog group and the older leadership is going to recognize they have to grapple with the new left in return, and these early comments are not encouraging.
There's a lot of what the Democrats can't do or can't be (I'm not a socialist, I'm not AOC, I'm not Ilhan). Cool, alright, but that doesn't really help voters, not least sympathetic voters who don't activate because they don't see anything to vote for, to understand what they are. If they are going to wilt at the face of Republican misinformation over what they really are and what they want, well.
Republicans are going to say whatever they're going to say. They don't need the DSA to call the blue team socialists or police haters. They did that to Barack Obama, who tried to triangulate during part of his presidency and held a beer summit over police brutality of all things. So maybe Democratic consultants could earn their salaries by shaping a message that will resist at least some of this misinformation instead of sitting there passively whining about it, and then attacking some of their own members over it. Because voters can also tell when a team is not playing like one.
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So everyone agrees this has nothing to do with Harrison at all, let alone why he lost in SC?
Good luck doing that when you will scare off the votes you'll need to actually enact that change.
Also on topic, I don't think this impacted Harrisons's loss that much, if at all seeing how he never ran on the idea. Graham is incredible an incredibly establish incumbent and Republicans are shameless.
Then run a better campaign and defend yourself instead of denigrating the activists that without you have absolutely 0 chance of getting elected.
Republicans branded Joe fucking Biden as a socialist. Democrats should stop worrying about things they can't control and start fighting for something.
Remember, the original "slogan" at the start of the Floyd protests was "abolish the police", and moderates whined about it that it was too scary, so activists toned it down to "defund".
This is how progressive causes are gradually undercut by moderates. The center whines and the left appeases. The center won't be happy until every protestor is marching while yelling "reform the police", which might be politically digestible but so what? You lost all your energy. We've seen what happens when a movement loses its radical energy, it peters out like OWS did.
This is how progressive causes are gradually undercut by moderates. The center whines and the left appeases. The center won't be happy until every protestor is marching while yelling "reform the police", which might be politically digestible but so what? You lost all your energy. We've seen what happens when a movement loses its radical energy, it peters out like OWS did.
The two party system can't die fast enough.
I'm tired of centrist clowns acting like they are the strategic and ethical pinnacle of the left.
I'm tired of centrist clowns acting like they are the strategic and ethical pinnacle of the left.