Reality Can’t Be Hidden Forever

The headline in today’s Washington Post story is:  “In a setback for Black Lives Matter, mayoral campaigns shift to ‘law and order’.”

Yes, it’s all true.  When violent crime surges, the public demands protection.  Who woulda thunk it?

The story is here.  This is a sample:

Mayoral candidates across the country are closing out their campaigns pledging to restore law and order, a major setback for racial justice protesters who only a year ago thought they had permanently reshaped the debate on policing in American cities.

As voters head to the polls Tuesday, local elections are dominated by discussions about safety and law enforcement amid a surge in violent crime. The tone of the debate, even in many liberal urban communities, highlights how major policing reforms have stalled.

From Buffalo to Seattle, Democratic politicians who once championed significant reductions or reallocations of police department budgets are backtracking. In other cities, including Cleveland, liberal candidates are being hammered over their stances on public safety….

The shift in the political strategies among big-city politicians, many of whom are Democrats, comes as a new poll shows public support for traditional policing strategies has increased since last year, when the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis galvanized the Black Lives Matter movement and powered its “defund the police” slogan.

A Pew Research Center poll published Tuesday shows that 47 percent of Americans want to increase funding for police, compared to 15 percent who want to decrease funding. Last June, when the racial justice protests were at their peak, 31 percent of Americans wanted to increase funding while 25 percent supported a decrease. Three-fourths of Black Americans, who form a decisive voting bloc in many mayoral contests, either support increasing or keeping spending on police the same, Pew found.

The shift in public opinion comes after the U.S. cities experienced a 30 percent jump in killings in 2020, the largest one-year increase since the federal government began compiling national figures in the 1960s.