Defund Didn't Cost Democrats
On A Narrative Lacking Truth
"Defund The Police cost Democrats" was a thing a lot of people said in the aftermath of the November elections, and it was a thing that a lot of moderates believed - and, even some of the left implicitly conceded. "It's not on activists to do messaging" was a common leftist refrain, freed from any logic (it literally is your job if you want to advocate for your beliefs, but whatever), but also seemingly accepting of the premise that Defund was a problem - but that it was actually the problem of centrists. The problem was, nobody ever actually proved it was a problem.
In Georgia, Kelly Loeffler and GOP messaging was all about Defund - how Raphael Warnock was a radical who wanted to Defund The Police and ruin America. She said it every time she spoke, not as a throwaway line but as a core tenant of her speeches. And she lost, and lost by more than Trump did. It's hard to take seriously the idea that this was a hugely important policy to swing voters in October and November, but suddenly a non-issue in December and January, but again, we were so confidently told that Defund cost Democrats, right?
Ah, but moderates said so, so it has to be true, right? It's not like those moderates either lost their seats or came close to losing their seats despite having D+10 or better internal polls and in many cases running sub-optimal campaigns locally or anything, no. There's no way that Defund could serve as a political useful idiot to these people, is there? Oh wait, it's totally that. The extent of the proof that Defund actually cost Democrats is fuzzy, unverifiable claims about how "internal data" showed it costing them (but, apparently, not those internal polls showing them up a ton, no no, other "data" we're never allowed to see).
So what did cost Democrats then, if it wasn't Defund? Honestly, not a whole lot they could do much about, in all probability. With Trump on the ballot, there are a whole legion of voters who Democrats can't and won't win, for whom Trump is a singular pull - one that Republicans have failed to get to the polls in any Trump-era election without Trump on the ballot. There is little reason to think they'll suddenly find a way to keep that voter coming to the polls - hell, they just failed to do so in Georgia last week - but with those voters activated, a big landslide of the sort that many, namely myself, thought was possible just isn't.
Could a little bit of rhetorical moderation maybe made Democrats win whites with a degree nationally by 12% instead of the 6% the Fox Exits say Biden won them by? Maybe, but that's just going to make Georgia go blue by 0.4% and not 0.25%, which is fairly unimportant. Is it enough to get Rita Hart into Congress? Maybe, but that seat is likely to be drawn safer for the GOP anyways in two years as the four corners districts give way to a Des Moines Democratic vote sink and three more rural Republican seats. But even then, was anyone going to hear that rhetorical moderation given Donald Trump was President and owning everyone's thoughts and energy? Probably not.
The rush to blame the Left for the losses Democrats took in the House, and the losses of Cal Cunningham and Sara Gideon, strike me the same way the push to make UK Labour more left wing after losing to David Cameron in 2015 did - ideologues looking for a way to get to yes. The notion that Jeremy Corbyn was going to be the answer never actually made any sense, as much as Theresa May's completely horrible 2017 campaign tried to convince us otherwise. UK Labour never engaged in any serious (or even unserious) autopsy work, deciding that they'd just let Jeremy Corbyn enter the contest as a lark to "encourage debate" in lieu of actual substantive reflection. Unsurprisingly, the gang who dreamt that solution up lost, and now Labour is having to start engaging with problems they should have solved a half decade ago.
If Democrats want to fall into dumb, factional infighting, they are free to do so. If they want to win elections, an open, honest autopsy is required. There are real, difficult questions that the party needs to look at - namely, in my view, why the party does so much worse with Americans who are actively religious than they used to. It's an untested theory, but looking at the places where Biden bled support from Clinton's fairly pitiful results, rural America is a problem - and, it's worse in places like southeastern Ohio than places like rural Maine, which suggests a weakness with religious voters. I'm skeptical they can be gotten back - I think the politics of gay marriage are a lot worse than people realize - but that's the kind of conversation the party needs to have. It needs to be willing to look at tough questions like that, not just blithely blame Defund for their problems. Easy solutions don't exist in politics, and all those centrists blaming Defund were just looking to bludgeon the left for their own advantage, not engage with why Pelosi's majority is so narrow.
Blaming Defund for Democratic ills might be a sop to some weak-kneed bleeding hearts, but it is trite, rote nonsense, best left in the hellscape that was 2020.