By Rich Lowry
Tuesday,
February 22, 2022
The Democratic Party is finally
realizing its vulnerability on culture issues, and perhaps no group better
exemplifies the problem than Black Lives Matter.
The group’s eponymous slogan swept all
before it in recent years. It was repeated by Democrats around the country.
Corporate leaders paid obeisance to it. Sports leagues displayed it. Such was
its totemic power that a more inclusive version of the three words — all lives
matter — was considered a dangerous heresy.
The BLM agenda on criminal justice — based
on the idea that fewer criminals should be arrested and held in jail — took
hold in blue jurisdictions, and the slogan “defund the police” got traction
despite its utter impracticality and obvious political destructiveness.
Now, it’s obvious how shortsighted and
foolhardy all this was. The rise in violent crime is a clear and present danger
to the Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, and progressive
prosecutors allied with BLM who have pursued soft-on-crime policies in the
midst of a crime wave are under fire, facing either recall or heavy criticism.
BLM the group is continuing to find ways
to underline its own extremism as it withers under scrutiny for its dodgy
finances.
If a right-wing purveyor of Internet
misinformation wanted to discredit BLM and its allies, he couldn’t do much
better than concoct a story in which a disturbed activist attempts to shoot and
kill a local politician and immediately gets bailed out by his BLM
brethren spouting cliched attacks on the criminal-justice system.
It’s what happened in Louisville, Ky.,
though. After 21-year-old Quintez Brown allegedly shot at — and missed —
mayoral candidate Craig Greenberg, the BLM chapter in Louisville quickly posted
his $100,000 bail. From attempted murder to walking free a couple of days
later is quite the turnaround.
The BLM organizer in Louisville, Chanelle
Helm, explained that it was necessary to bail out Brown because “they are
calling for this individual, this young man who needs support and help, to be
punished to the full extent. It is a resounding message that people are down
for the torture that has taken place in our jails and prisons.”
Everyone agrees that Brown has
mental-health problems and needs treatment, but given the violent act he’s
accused of, common sense dictates that he receive it while confined.
In the wake of George Floyd’s death, BLM’s
radicalism was very good business. The group’s co-founder, Patrisse Cullors,
said the other day that the money raised itself, as practically every entity in
America that wanted to bolster its “social justice” credentials tried to buy
its way into BLM’s good graces. “People have to know we didn’t go out and
solicit the money,” Cullors explained. “This is money that came from white
guilt, white corporation guilt, and they just poured money in.”
If that sounds a tad defensive, it’s
because BLM raised $90 million in 2020, and it’s unclear who has stewardship of
the funds or how they’re being spent. BLM has gone from a sainted group to one
that’s on the run. California and Washington have ordered BLM to stop
fundraising in those states, and in a telling symbolic blow, impeccably woke
Amazon has kicked BLM off its charity platform, AmazonSmile.
Cullors has the explanation that you’d expect
for the new focus on BLM’s lack of financial controls — “anti-black racism.”
Yes, good accounting is racist now.
Democrats wonder how they can blunt GOP
attacks on culture issues, and believe that if they explain their positions
better, they’ll be fine. But the party is positioned so far left that it needs
bold gestures. If it wanted to send an unmistakable signal of change, it would
denounce the leadership of BLM, call for investigations into its finances,
declare that the group’s priorities aren’t those of the Democratic Party, and
wear the ensuing furor from the Left as a badge of honor.
But Democrats won’t do that, and can’t do
that — which is why they are in such trouble.
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