Tom Fulks: Honest Abe is OK and ‘defund the police’ is counterproductive jargon

I’m cool with Abraham Lincoln. We’re good.

My gender preferences are “he, she, it” — an unhip reaction to being told to state my pronouns on zoom calls, though I understand and support why some do that voluntarily.

I think the term “defund the police” is dumb.

It detracts from the urgent need to reform and demilitarize civilian law enforcement so we can solve the human problems that lead to crime.

Now, I expect to be called a white, old, privileged, bigoted mansplainer by many on the local left — then probably canceled.

New-age lefties tolerate no breach of their orthodoxy, not even by me, a compatriot battling the real threat to their policy dreams, QAnoners — formerly known as GOP Republicans, today called the GQP.

Treating Lincoln like a Confederate traitor isn’t just offensive and historically wrong, it drives a lot of voters toward the GQP.

So does requiring everyone to place gender pronouns by their names, or shouting the “defund” non-sequitur amidst an epic battle between American fascism and democracy.

The Democratic Party is America’s best hope against authoritarianism. Yet the party’s brand is so toxic that some 70 million voters choose caging kids, sacking the nation’s Capitol and voting for corporate watercarriers and proto-fascists over their own interests — and our country’s.

Erasing Lincoln, force-feeding incomprehensible social strictures, sloganeering critical police reform, none of that will help attain universal health coverage, secure stronger voting rights and ballot access, or bring racial equality and economic justice for all.

Extremism on the left is no antidote to the poisonous radicalism of the right that has left our nation in tatters.

Winning elections is.

Social zealotry only pushes long-sought progressive goals beyond reach, repelling the very voters Democrats need to gain to maintain the political power necessary to achieve them.

It’s difficult enough for Dems to win. They cling tenuously to power in Congress. President Biden has the narrowest margin to deliver on his campaign promises to eradicate the pandemic and resuscitate the economy.

“There have been three Democratic presidents in 28 years,” Biden said recently. “Each one faced a tough midterm loss that cost a lot. … We don’t want to let that happen here. So, let’s stick together.”

Tossing social-issue grenades into the Democratic Party narrative does the opposite.

In San Luis Obispo County, Democrats haven’t held the majority on the Board of Supervisors since 2012, when GQPer Debbie Arnold beat liberal Jim Patterson for the Fifth District seat.

The last Democrat to hold our Assembly seat was Jack O’Connell, who left for the state Senate in 1994.

Democrats make up 38% of SLO County’s electorate, Republicans 35 and No Party Preference voters 21. Given the numbers, Dems should be winning more, but they’re not.

Biden won SLO County by 13 points, but the GQP holds most of the political power: The majority of the Board of Supervisors, the District Attorney’s Office, Sheriff’s Office and Assembly seat. There are even GQPers on local school boards.

Statewide, Dems in 2020 lost five of seven House seats they flipped in 2018. Now the Democratic governor faces recall.

Getting SLO County voters to vote Blue can only be made more difficult by ill-considered social decrees from the left. As the 2022 election cycle nears, SLO County’s Democrats should take stock.

If they hope to achieve systemic racial, social and environmental justice in local government, they have to win elections. They shouldn’t let intellectually lazy slogans sink good policy — or good politics.

Instead of “defund,” articulate a compelling vision: policy, programs and budget priorities aimed at solving the many problems police shouldn’t be tasked with handling in the first place.

The GQP solution is to throw money at failure — more officers, more militarization, more violence.

Democrats can champion comprehensive tactics aimed at the intersection of mental health, addiction, homelessness and law enforcement.

This is what “defund” actually means: effective modern policing protecting our communities by helping people, not punishing them.

It’s a winning idea to promote government doing things for people rather than to them, like the We Are the Care Initiative run by the county Child Care Planning Council.

Policy that cares about children, helps working parents work and keeps our working class healthy and economically secure is good politics.

A Democratic majority on the county Board of Supervisors would sign onto Community Choice Energy, putting cost savings and clean-energy jobs behind their carbon-reduction rhetoric.

Offering non-ideological voters less social orthodoxy and more achievable progressive policy is the approach Democrats need to win elections.

Making government work for people — it’s what Lincoln would do.

Tribune Columnist Tom Fulks serves on the San Luis Obispo County Democratic Central Committee.