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Jaicee on 11 July 2020
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NightlyPoe said:
gergroy said:

That’s pretty much Trump in a nutshell.  No cohesive plan or strategy, just keeping throwing stuff out there until something sticks, and then hammer away it... we need a new president...

Thing is, both ads are basically true even if they sound thematically opposite.  Biden did create those bills and he hasn't stood up to the defunding movement.

It's hardly contradictory to be both in favor of criminal sentencing reform and against defunding the police.  A lot of people fall into that category, including Trump who did sign a reform bill on the subject in what was one of the few actually meaningful bills he's managed to sign.

There is more smark than legitimate criticism of Trump's position here.

The fact of the matter is that Biden has changed his position on this issue since the 1990s. Most Democrats (who are still Democrats) have too. When the now-infamous crime bill was first enacted back in 1994, the polls showed it was supported mainly by black people because violent crime really was a much more serious problem back then that was disproportionately affecting majority-black communities. Today it is widely recognized that that bill's emphasis on elevating punishments was a serious problem that has been applied in a racist way. There were also several other, earlier Republican-advanced crime bills over the '80s that moved the needle in the same direction and were really more consequential than the 1994 measure we always focus on. There today exists a broad consensus among Democrats, liberals, and progressives that the criminal justice system needs to be overhauled in a way that changes the main focus from punishment to rehabilitation, and which favors more accountability for police officers and whole departments.

ANYWAY, Biden has been inconsistent about whether there should now be funding cuts to police departments. It's clear that his first instinct is to resist that step, but that he is also under much pressure to go there to at least some degree. (He should.) Will there be funding cuts to police departments or simply decriminalizations of various non-violent offenses and moves to enhance restorative justice in the prison system under a President Joe Biden? It's tough to tell. That appears malleable at this moment. What is clear though is that under a President Biden, the needle will move in the general direction of reducing mass incarceration and increased regulation of policing.

The Trump campaign ads want to have it both ways at the same time. They at once want Joe Biden to still be where he was in 1994 and also several leaps beyond where he actually is today at the same time. (The title "Abolished" in the first video, as well as the general content, implies, ludicrously, that Biden actually favors abolishing police departments and just letting crime go unchecked by anything.) You can't have it both ways. Either Biden is surely going to impose a police state upon us or he's going to abolish the state in favor of social chaos. I pointed that out because it's ridiculous. Almost as ridiculous as having to explain this right now. Sorry for having a sense of humor about it.