Thursday, March 11, 2021

A Political Party Is Not a Social Movement!

As promised, here is my latest from The Liberal Patriot:
"Recent polling data attest to the declining popularity of the BLM movement. According to the new USA Today/Ipsos poll, public trust in BLM “to promote justice and equal treatment for people of all races” has declined 10 points to 50 percent since last June (42 percent among whites). Over the same time period, trust in local police and law enforcement has spiked 13 points to 69 percent (77 percent among whites). Current levels of trust in BLM are much higher and trust in local police much lower among blacks, but relative to last June, decline in BLM trust and increase in local police trust have actually been greater among blacks than whites.
In the same poll, views on defunding the police are massively negative. Just 18 percent of Americans support the idea, a figure that rises to just 28 percent among blacks and 34 percent among Democrats.
At the same time, the massive and massively popular American Rescue Act has now been passed by Congress and is set to be signed into law by President Biden this Friday. So what should the Democrats do about this disjuncture? Nothing, absolutely nothing. A political party is a vehicle for maximizing votes and getting things done like the American Rescue Plan. It is not a social movement and is under no obligation to shore up a movement that is having public opinion problems. This is especially so when the weight of the evidence suggests that Democrats were hurt, not helped, by the close identification of the party with the BLM movement as it morphed from a movement against police brutality to one associated with radicalism like defunding the police and an unending parade of performative corporate gestures."
Read the rest at The Liberal Patriot. And subscribe!

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