Guess Who Is Making Liberals Furious for Telling Them It's Stupid to Say 'Defund the Police'

I had many many many many problems with Barack Obama as president, and I have more than a few with Barack Obama the private citizen.

But I will give the man this: He was a savvy enough politician that he knew better than to run around making statements that a) reflected no serious policy objective; and b) would sound insane and alienate people who would otherwise consider voting for you.

Some of this was dishonesty on Obama’s part. He pretended to be against gay marriage in 2008 because he perceived the political atmosphere wasn’t yet to the point where he could get away with it. He pretended to “evolve” on the issue when he believed it was safe to admit what everyone knew he already thought.

Sometimes Obama’s pleas to sanity are more sincere, like when he cautions radical leftists against trying to cancel everyone who doesn’t agree with them.

Obama abused his power as president, used federal law enforcement to go after political opponents and allowed Kayla Mueller to be tortured and murdered by ISIS when it was still possible to save her. He is no one’s model of a good president – yet some people may think that because of his soothing voice.

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Yet he’s more sane than the standard-bearers of today’s Democratic Party, and they don’t like it one bit:

“I guess you can use a snappy slogan like ‘defund the police’ but, you know, you lost a big audience the minute you say it,” Obama said, “which makes it a lot less likely that you’re actually going to get the changes you want done.”

“The key is deciding, do you want to actually get something done,” the former president added, “or do you want to feel good among the people you already agree with? And if you want to get something done in a democracy, in a country as big and diverse as ours, then you’ve got to be able to meet people where they are.”

Some progressive lawmakers sharply rebuked Obama’s comments. Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar tweeted on Tuesday that defunding the police was a “policy demand.”

“We lose people in the hands of police,” Omar wrote. “It’s not a slogan but a policy demand. And centering the demand for equitable investments and budgets for communities across the country gets us progress and safety.”

Omar is joined by other left-wing superstars in their indignation over Obama’s statement. Cori Bush, who was just elected to the House from Missouri, says “defund the police” isn’t a snappy slogan but a mandate.

I actually think this is a somewhat hopeful sign for the country. The advocates of the left’s most loony ideas clearly lack the political tact to carry them through to become policy. Obama was very good at making his radical agenda sound mainstream. He would talk about “common-sense regulations” to cover up an agenda to take away people’s guns. He would pretend he was going to let you keep your private health insurance even though he had no such intention. He would insist he was only embarking on a spending blowout of $862 billion in order to undertake “shovel-ready” infrastructure projects, even though he knew that wasn’t where the money would be going at all.

I’m not sure Obama is all that less radical than Ilhan Omar, although, having served eight years as president, he probably has a better sense than she does of what’s actually possible. He probably also knows there are unintended consequences to certain ideas that a congresswoman from Minneapolis has no clue about.

But this is where today’s left stands. Barack Obama is too moderate for them, and they have no interest in his advice about how to achieve their policy goals. By doing it their way, they elected a Democrat president who will be able to get almost none of his agenda passed because the voters kept the Senate Republican and added more Republican seats to the House.

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Ilhan Omar will be free to complain for the next two years (at least) about how her left-wing ideas are going nowhere. But she won’t listen to the last guy who actually got some of them passed.

Good.