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**NOVEMBER 17, 2020**

Meyerson on TAP

The Electoral Clout of Those Rein-In-the-Cops Demonstrations

Today, I want to call attention to an important piece

the

**Prospect**ran on our website today. The article, by Los Angeles
journalist Erin Aubry Kaplan, documents how Black Lives Matters' Los
Angeles chapter not merely turned street heat on police and
prosecutorial practices, but helped frame several key election contests
around those issues in ways that led to some signal victories.

Two victories were particularly notable in Los Angeles County-which,
with ten million residents, is so large it would rank 11th in population
if it were a state. In one, county voters unseated county District
Attorney Jackie Lacey, whose record included virtually no prosecutions
of cops, no matter their brutality, in favor of police reform advocate
and former San Francisco DA George Gascón. It was BLM-LA's yearslong
campaign that brought Lacey's record to public attention. And the
Gascón/BLM victory was also a resounding vote

**against**identity politics, as Lacey is Black and Gascón is white and
Cuban.

In the other victory, for Ballot Measure J, voters mandated the county
to set aside 10 percent of its unrestricted funds for social services,
and prohibited use of those funds for law enforcement or prisons. As
Kaplan notes, BLM framed the measure

not as a way to decrease police but to increase services desperately
needed by Black, brown, and poorer neighborhoods. It turned out that
voters found that adding services, rather than subtracting law
enforcement, was an anti-racist cause they could more easily get behind.

But Los Angeles was not a one-off in this November's elections when it
came to police and criminal justice reform. According to a Washington
Post tally
,
at least 22 reform DAs in the Gascón mode were elected in cities and
counties around the country, and measures creating or strengthening
civilian oversight and review of police were enacted in a number of
municipalities, too. And beyond question, the voter mobilization efforts
of BLM groups across the land contributed to Joe Biden's winning
margin.

So while "defund the police" is clearly not a slogan with electoral
potential, the politically adept BLM movement understands that. For
their part, though, moderate Democrats need to understand how important
the multiracial movement against systemic police racism and abuse is to
the present and future of their party and, yes, to winning elections.
Nationally, Democrats need to lead with the universal bread-and-butter
issues of creating a more just and vibrant economy-but curtailing a
host of common police practices must be part of the mix, too.

~ HAROLD MEYERSON

Follow Harold Meyerson on Twitter

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Leading From the Left

What Joe Biden can learn from Elizabeth Warren and Bharat Ramamurti BY
ROBERT KUTTNER

Trump's New Toy: the Pentagon

Installing new Defense Department leadership, is he merely indulging
spite? BY JONATHAN STEVENSON

How Biden Could Give Everyone Medicare on His Own

Okay-he won't, but the creative application of existing laws that
would allow it reflects exactly how a Biden administration needs to be
thinking. BY DAVID DAYEN

Black Lives Matter as Electoral Powerhouse

In Los Angeles, the movement's street smarts were matched by its
ability to shape issues, turn out voters, and win at the polls. BY
ERIN AUBRY KAPLAN

Unsanitized: Republicans Boldly Decide to Stop Letting People Die

It's the usual American path of exhausting all possibilities before
doing the right thing. This is The COVID-19 Daily Report for November
17, 2020. BY DAVID DAYEN

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