By Tim Donner

It was worth a shot, one supposes. With urban crime rates rising and approval for Democrats tanking, it had apparently become necessary for the left to try and turn the tables on those reactionary Republicans howling about the soaring crime rates in our greatest cities from coast to coast. But this would take more than the usual too-clever-by-half political spin. It would require unmitigated gall.
Cedric Richmond

Cedric Richmond

So here went the tortuous strategy: Since everyone is blaming President Joe Biden and his party for the breakdown of law and order, a clever word play, a house-of-mirrors misdirection on defunding the police, bound to be picked up thematically by the major media wing of the progressive movement, might reverse the curse of Democrats always being blamed for rising lawlessness. Yes, they might ordinarily be laughed off the stage by normal people for such an assertion, but with the unquestioning cooperation of corporate media in the bank, it was evidently worth the risk to flip the narrative — or else trouble awaits in the 2022 midterms.

Thus, one Cedric Richmond, senior adviser to the president, laid it down with carefully spun talking points: “Let’s talk about who defunded the police. When we were in Congress last year trying to pass an emergency relief plan for cities that were cash-strapped and laying off police and firefighters, it was the Republicans who objected to it,” he told Fox News.