Watch Obama Pour Cold Water on ‘Defund the Police’ Slogan: ‘You Lose a Big Audience the Minute You Say It’
Former President Barack Obama became the latest prominent Democrat to pour cold water on the “Defund the Police” slogan when he told an interviewer that the “snappy” mantra immediately loses large chunks of the electorate, and is an obstacle to the reforms it aims to enact.
The former two-term president appeared on Peter Hamby’s Good Luck America show on Snapchat, in an interview that aired Wednesday morning. During that interview, Hamby asked President Obama about the slogan that Democrats like House Majority Whip James Clyburn have identified as a reason for the party’s poor showing in congressional races.
“When you were a community organizer, a lot of the folks in the community you were dealing with really just kind of wanted modest change, they wanted to do better for their families,” Hamby said, and asked “If you’re a young activist today, and you believe really passionately in a slogan like ‘Defund the Police,’ what is your advice to that activist, also knowing that a lot of politicians won’t go near that phrase?”
President Obama offered a considered but clear rebuke of the phrase, but not the aims of the reform movement:
It’s interesting, we take for granted that if you want people to buy your sneakers, then you’re going to market it to an audience. If a musician drops a record, they’re going to try to reach certain audiences, speaking to folks where they are. It’s no different in terms of ideas.
If you believe, as I do, that we should be able to reform the criminal justice system so that it’s not biased, and treats everybody fairly, I guess you can use a snappy slogan like ‘Defund the Police,’ but you know you’ve lost a big audience the minute you say it. Which makes it a lot less likely that you’re actually going to get the changes you want done.
But if you instead say ‘Let’s reform the police department so that everybody’s being treated fairly, divert young people from getting into crime, and if there’s a homeless guy, maybe we send a mental health worker there instead of an armed unit that could end up resulting in a tragedy.’
Suddenly, a whole bunch of folks who might not otherwise listen to you are listening to you. So the key is deciding do you want to actually get something done, or do you want to feel good among the people you already agree with? And if you want to get something done, in a democracy, in a country as big and diverse as ours, you’ve got to be able to meet people where they are, and play a game of addition and not subtraction.
President-elect Joe Biden has also rejected the slogan, and consistently expressed support for the reforms Obama mentioned, and proposes using increased funding as an incentive for change. Nevertheless, President Donald Trump ran a slew of false ads claiming the opposite, and portraying a nightmare America where reports of rape and murder are diverted to a voicemail at an empty police station.
Watch above via Good Luck America.
