by Robert Romano
Former Vice President Joe Biden has selected U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) as his running mate and presumptive Democratic Party nominee for Vice President in the 2020 election as the Biden campaign goes all in on the defund the police issue.
In June Sen. Harris supported cutting $150 million from the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) budget and taking the police force below 10,000 for the first time in more than a decade.
“I applaud Eric Garcetti for doing what he’s done,” Harris told ABC’s Good Morning America host George Stephanopoulos in June, adding, “Right now, what we’re seeing in America is many cities spend over one-third of their entire city budget on policing but meanwhile we’ve been defunding public schools for years in America.”
Harris explained, “We’ve got to re-examine what we’re doing with American taxpayer dollars and ask the question: are we getting the right return on our investment? Are we actually creating healthy and safe communities? That’s a legitimate conversation and it requires a really critical evaluation.”
The pick of Harris comes as Biden for his part has attempted to thread the needle on the issue by saying he doesn’t want to defund the police, he wants to condition federal funding on whether police are “honorable.”
Biden told CBS News in an interview: “No, I don’t support defunding the police. I support conditioning federal aid to police based on whether or not they meet certain basic standards of decency and honorableness and … are able to demonstrate they can protect the community.”
Meaning, if police departments did not meet up with Biden’s criteria, he would indeed deny funds.
But it comes at a time when Democrats and the country are deeply divided on the defund the police issue, both in polls among voters and among the party establishment.
In June, an ABC News/Ipsos poll found 64 percent of Americans reject the idea of defunding the police, including 91 percent of Republicans, 45 percent of Democrats, 43 percent of blacks, 58 percent of Hispanics and 74 percent of whites.
Those numbers swelled in a July Pew poll that found 73 percent say police funding should either remain the same or increase, including 42 percent who say police spending should remain the same and 31 percent say it should be increased.
Only 25 percent of Americans supported cutting spending for local police departments in the Pew poll, with just 12 percent saying it should be decreased a lot and another 14 percent saying it should be reduced a little.
By picking Harris, who supported cutting LAPD funding by $150 million, Biden is running a national political program with as little as 25 percent public support.
Biden could have used the VP selection to distance himself from this issue, which is inextricably linked to the ongoing riots in the wake of the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody. Instead he chose to use the VP pick to sharpen his stance on it, and to ensure that the election will be about race and police by shoring up Biden’s anti-police bonafides.
To be fair, though, finding a national Democratic political figure somehow not wrapped up in this issue is extraordinarily difficult. The party is under incredible pressure at the moment.
In short, Harris is a sop to the BLM-Antifa wing of the party, a signal by Biden to the rioters and protesters that says “I’m with you”, but at the cost of moderate Democrats in suburban areas who oppose defunding the police. At Biden’s age of 77, he needed somebody that would project confidence to lead the nation.
Instead, Biden and Harris seem to want to meet the protest movement halfway, seeking out a weak middle position that strips police of resources at the very time of heightened violent crime and civil unrest.
And, by selecting a California radical senator, it is questionable if Biden picks up any votes among Independents or Republicans, which he surely needs if he is to have any hope of pulling out swing states. Is Biden trying to lose the suburbs?
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Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government.
They are not stupid. This is the lead in for a new National Police Force to replace all local jurisdictions having a police force. This has been their dream for years. Notice Sleepy Joe now says it should be a nationally enforced “wear that mask, citizen”, edict. That is their answer to everything. No local jurisdiction over anything. Al Sharpton, and folks like him, have preached that a National Police Force should solve all the law and order problems. They point the finger at the scandinavian states and say “look how peaceful they are.” Yes, it gets peaceful at -20F. Those who have spent winters, even in Minneapolis, know that the rioting and looting will stop when it reaches -20F there. Many of those countries are smaller than Texas or California, some with budgets smaller than Delaware.
So, defund the local police. People complain? OK, tell them we are going to replace with National Police directed and controlled by D.C. The new national police chief will probably be James Comey with assistance by his crossfire-hurricane cronies.
And it will be OK when unarmed black persons, or any others, are shot and killed by National Police.
Remember Mariam Carey? No, you probably don’t. She was a young, unarmed black woman who crashed into a barricade in front of the White House back in 2013. She also had a young child with her. She was shot and killed by Federal SS agents. She was permanently separated from her child. There was scant news coverage and no protests, not even from the most prominent black civil rights leaders. Now why was that? There was a Capitol lockdown and Congress bipartisanly cheered the action of the agents. I don’t recall a statement from President Obama.So when a “National Police force uses “excessive force” or kills unarmed subjects, who will complain? Just write your Congress person a letter.
This is definitely a pretext for instituting a far less accountable “Gestapo” or “KGB” type force much further from the most local accountability tothe People. This is certainly a “power trip” dream of leftist authoritarians who despise the “separation of powers” of our Constitutional Republic which preserves the Liberty and Sovereignity of the People controlling their government.
Joe Biden cutting funds for the police? That’s too good to be true and I won’t believe it until I see it with my own eyes!
Maybe he won’t be a hypocrite and call for defunding the Secret Service too.
The nomination of these two miscreants by the Democratic party would be laughable at any other time. However, it is not a laughing matter presently since the new “mantra” by the Democrats is “vote blue no matter who”, a very dangerous ideology. Biden, a 40+ year political parasite is the last person we (USA) want as POTUS. Harris, another political hack with a less than sterling background is not the person we should have for VP.
Both individuals have far too many skeletons in their closets.
In 1900, a Republican Senator objected to the pick of Theodore Roosevelt as VP, asking “You do realize there would be just one life between that madman and the presidency?”
I don’t think the Biden/Harris team will win the election, but should it happen, we will hear about a “stroke” or “heart attack” that takes “President Biden” down, sometime in the first six months of his term. (If the Democrats are smart, they’ll wait two years, allowing Harris to serve all ten years available to a person.)
Mr. Flatt,
Your Biden/Harris scenario is very disturbing but has been voiced before. For the sake of our country I hope they do not win in November. I’m amazed that Biden/Harris is the best that the Democrats have to offer. A truly pathetic duo for the Democratic party nomination.