Amy Walter:
Yes, Democrats, there’s been this sort of intraparty tension here between — in the wake of the killing of George Floyd, the calls for racial reckoning, for police reform.
And then, on the other side within the party, there’s also the sort of flashback to the 2020 election, with many, especially moderate Democrats, arguing that calls to defund the police actually cost them seats in Congress.
So, at the national level, you feel that pull, and you’re feeling it in New York as well. As Hari pointed out, the more progressive candidate who’s leading the other progressives, at least in the polling, is Maya Wiley, is the highest level proponent of defunding.
But the — or shifting funding, as she says. But the other three candidates are much more moderate on this issue. Look, New York is very different. It’s not — we can’t use it as a microcosm for any other city. But it may tell us something at least about this tension.
And, of course, the mayor of New York City always gets under the microscope, and they become sort of a stand-in for the Democratic Party writ large.
