Democratic strategist James Carville said support from some on the left for the push to defund the police has become a major hindrance for the party’s candidates, including Vice President Harris during her presidential campaign.
“We could never wash off the stench of it,” Carville said in an interview with The New York Times.
He added that the phrase “defund the police” is “the three stupidest words in the English language.”
The phrase initiated with the Black Lives Matter movement. It calls for decreasing police department budgets to invest in other community services in the hopes of minimizing the public’s contact with law enforcement.
Harris, who often mentioned her history as prosecutor on the campaign trail, rarely spoke of the Black Lives Matter movement. In 2020, however, she called for redirecting funds from police budgets to other resources.
And despite her spending only minimal time speaking of her identity as a woman of color during her campaign, Carville said Democrats have become the party of wokeism — or what he calls “identitarianism.”
As such, he said, voters feel that “identity is more important than humanity.”
“It’s like when you get smoke on your clothes and you have to wash them again and again,” said Carville. “Now people are running away from it like the devil runs away from holy water.”
