Barack Obama criticizes 'Defund the Police' slogan but faces backlash

Barack Obama chastised Democratic political candidates for using “snappy” slogans like “defund the police” that he argued could turn voters away, in an interview released this week.

“You lost a big audience the minute you say it, which makes it a lot less likely that you’re actually going to get the changes you want done,” the former president told show host Peter Hamby in an interview with Good Luck America, a Snapchat political show.

“The key is deciding, do you want to actually get something done, or do you want to feel good among the people you already agree with?” Obama added.

However, Obama also defended the place of young progressives as important “new blood” in the Democratic party, singling out Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – who has spoken out strongly on the phrase and the essence of defunding police departments to boost social spending.

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Former Obama campaign operative Ben LaBolt shared part of the president’s interview with Hamby online on Tuesday before the full interview went live on Snapchat on Wednesday.

The remarks drew immediate backlash from notable, Black progressive Democrats – including the Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, who stressed “defund the police” was not about mere words but a “demand for equitable investments and budgets for communities across the country”.

“We didn’t lose Breonna because of a ‘slogan’,” said Kentucky state representative Charles Booker, referencing Breonna Taylor, the Black, Louisville woman who was shot dead in her own apartment by police in March during a botched raid.

Booker broke barriers in 2018 when he became the youngest Black lawmaker elected to the Kentucky state legislature in nearly a century. And he ran a close contest for the Democratic nomination to challenge – ultimately unsuccessfully – the Republican Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell’s seat in the November election.

Cori Bush, who made history last month by becoming the first Black woman elected to represent Missouri in Congress shot back at Obama that “Defund the Police” was “not a slogan. It’s a mandate for keeping [Black] people alive.”

“With all due respect, Mr President – let’s talk about losing people,” she said. “We lost Michael Brown Jr. We lost Breonna Taylor. We’re losing our loved ones to police violence.”

The Black Lives Matter movement member’s rise in politics stemmed from her work as a community activist during protests against the shooting death of Mike Brown in Ferguson in 2014.

Bush is also the only candidate to formally run on a platform of defunding the police – a point many analysts say make criticism of the movement unwarranted.

Defund the Police has been a widely used phrase and policy initiative that gained traction over the summer as racial justice and anti-policing protests erupted in response to the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police in May.

As a policy initiative, defunding police departments involves the reallocation of local and state resources away from law enforcement into public services, designed to address issues of poverty, inequality and mental health – factors that contribute to crime.

The former president’s comments echoed other moderate Democrats who have taken issue and consider the phrase polarizing, prompting criticism of a progressive movement led by what some have called radical messaging.

In South Carolina, where the Democratic base is largely composed of Black Americans who skew older and moderate, the Democratic incumbent Joe Cunningham lost his House seat to Republican Nancy Mace in the November election.

In the days following, the South Carolina congressman and House minority whip James Clyburn, who was regarded as instrumental in turning around Joe Biden’s flagging campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination when the moderate was behind leftist champion Bernie Sanders, told NBC News the slogan hurt some Democratic candidates.

“If you instead say ‘Let’s reform the police department so that everybody’s being treated fairly,’” Clyburn offered alternatively. “Not just in policing, but in sentencing, how can we divert young people from getting into crime?’”

While Obama took issue with progressive slogans, he also criticized moderate leadership for failing to recognize the increasingly powerful influence of young, progressives such as Ocasio-Cortez.

The former president chastised the Democratic National Committee for only briefly featuring such democratic socialists in their opening montage during their national convention in Milwaukee in August.

“She speaks to a broad section of young people who are interested in what she has to say, even if they don’t agree with everything she says. You give her a platform,” he said, adding that across political ideologies “new blood is always good” for the party.