Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. The 2024 race has begun. Democrats thought they saw a leftward shift in 2020. They were mistaken. As we explain, "defund the police" hurt the Democrats in key congressional races. California voters rejected affirmative action. Immigration remained problematic.
The big picture: Across politics, business, education and the economy, a number of the sudden, radical shifts we experienced in 2020 have proven short-lived.
1. DEI: America's racial justice reckoning after the police murder of George Floyd in 2020 led many organizations to hire diversity officers and invest heavily in efforts to address racial inequality.Over the past two years, conservatives have waged a remarkably successful war against those initiatives — prompting many companies to cut DEI funding and drop racial justice as a talking point.
2. Policing: Amid the 2020 protests and calls to defund the police, a number of cities cut their law enforcement budgets.The next year, many of those cities — including New York, Los Angeles, Denver and Dallas — restored and even increased police funding in response to surging violent crime.
Police reforms are now being rolled back in cities and states across the country, with "defund the police" shifting from a progressive slogan to a Republican weapon that very few Democrats align with.
3. Immigration: During his 2020 campaign, President Biden cast former President Trump's harsh border policies as part of a "battle for the soul of the country" that inspired his decision to run.Amid a record wave of migrants illegally crossing the border over the last several years, Biden is now considering a dramatic executive order that would impose Trump-like restrictions on asylum-seekers.
Half of Americans — including 42% of Democrats — say they'd support mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, according to an Axios Vibes survey by The Harris Poll released Thursday.
