OPINION: On CRT, ‘Defund The Police,’ And Remote Learning, Democrats Know Their Policies Are Unpopular

Polling for the 2022 midterms must be brutal for Democrats. That’s the only explanation for why they are now backtracking and gaslighting on three of their most prominent policy goals in the past year: Critical Race Theory (CRT), “Defund the Police,” and keeping kids out of school for pandemic-related concerns.

In just the past month or so, Democrats who have prominently supported these issues have changed their tune, with some even pretending they never supported the unpopular policies in the first place, or accusing their opponents of being the real supporters.

Take CRT, for example. MSNBC host Joy Reid invited author Ibram X. Kendi — perhaps the best-known figure associated with CRT and the “anti-racism” movement — to push back on parental efforts to stop public schools from teaching CRT to their children. Kendi claimed that he does not believe that all white people are “inherently racist,” and if that is what schools are teaching, he “would speak out against that school.”

Yet he hasn’t spoken out against any school that has perpetuated such claims, however, even though there is ample evidence of schools doing just this.

This wasn’t the only problem with Kendi’s interview, as The Daily Wire’s Ben Johnson previously reported. Host Joy Reid tried to claim Rep. Josh Hawley (R-MO) misquoted Kendi, when, in fact, it was a real quote. Despite what Reid tried to suggest, Kendi did previously say “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”

Reid also tried to distance Kendi from CRT, asking if he is “a critical race theorist?”

Kendi worded his response carefully, saying he’s “certainly been inspired by Critical Race Theory,” but he “didn’t go to law school, and so I don’t necessarily identify as a critical race theorist.”

But just a few days earlier, Kendi absolutely accepted the notion that he was connected to CRT, saying nothing when fellow “Morning Joe” panelist Keisha Blain, a professor, said General Mark Milley’s defense of Kendi’s book was “one of the most powerful speeches I have heard in defense of Critical Race Theory.”

Media outlets are also trying to gaslight Americans on what bans of CRT in public schools actually do. The New York Times, ABC, and others have claimed the bans, introduced and implemented by Republican lawmakers, would stop the teaching of slavery as part of American history, an absolutely false claim.

On Tuesday, after more than a year of Democrats, media pundits, and progressive activists cheering the “Defund the Police” movement, with some major cities actually voting to defund or greatly reduce funding for their police departments, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki audaciously tried to blame the Republican Party for defunding law enforcement.

At a White House press briefing, Fox News reporter Peter Doocy mentioned Biden administration advisor Cedric Richmond claiming “Republicans defunded the police by not supporting the American Rescue Plan.” Doocy asked how that could be an argument “when the President never mentioned needing money for police to stop a crime wave when he was selling the American Rescue Plan?”

Psaki responded:

Well, the President did mention that the American Rescue Plan, they’ll — the state and local funding — something that was supported by the President, a lot of Democrats who supported and voted for the bill — could help ensure local cops were kept on the beat in communities across the country. As you know, it didn’t receive a single Republican vote. That funding has been used to keep cops on the beat.

As The Daily Wire’s Ryan Saavedra previously wrote, “Republicans opposed the American Rescue Plan because the U.S. economy was already showing signs of recovering and they argued that the American Rescue Plan, a $1.9 trillion stimulus, was irresponsible and a massive waste of taxpayer money. Inflation has skyrocketed in the months since the Democrats’ stimulus bill was passed.”

It’s been Democrats and Democrat-run cities who have wanted to defund the police, while demonizing law enforcement. It’s clear that’s an unpopular slogan, given how many progressives have tried to claim “defund” doesn’t really mean “defund” or that they never supported such sentiment anyway. Now the Left is trying to not only backtrack on the slogan, but insist it was the Republican Party who were the real villains when it comes to police.

Absurd.

Finally, we have Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation for Teachers, claiming her union has “tried to reopen schools safely since April 2020…”

This is another false claim, as emails published by the New York Post showed the AFT lobbied the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention against fully re-opening schools for in-person teaching, even after numerous studies and experts had said schools posed little threat to students or teachers. Children are unlikely to get COVID-19, and the hyperbolic whining from teachers claiming going back to the classroom meant their deaths – even though grocery store workers had been working through the pandemic without complaining or being a major source of infections – really outraged parents.

Children were kept from the classroom, kept from socializing with their friends and their peers. It resulted in major mental health issues for young people and lower performance and attendance. Public schools lost millions of students as parents began to homeschool or moved their children to private schools, which opened up much sooner without any significant COVID-related problems.

Weingarten’s teacher’s union stood against science, common sense, and what was best for children, and now she’s claiming that it was all about opening schools safely.

It sure would be nice to see the internal polling on these issues that have caused the Left to lunge so wildly into damage control.

The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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