The Black Lives Matter movement, financed, in part, by billionaire George Soros, rebuffed the Democratic Party’s attempts to win its formal favor—even though the resolution put the Democrats on record as supporting “the hands up, don’t shoot” mythology that emerged from the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. On the anniversary of Brown’s death, the Washington Post published a long article finding that the “vast majority” of the 585 people killed by the police during the first seven months of 2015 were armed with deadly weapons. Moreover, most were white or Hispanic. Just 24 were unarmed black men. Nonetheless, a virulent anti-police campaign ensued after Ferguson, leading police in cities such as Milwaukee, St. Louis, and Cincinnati to back off from enforcement. St. Louis police chief Sam Dotson calls this “The Ferguson Effect.”

The anti-cop rhetoric of the Black Lives Matter movement can be overlooked by the DNC and its upper-middle class, liberal supporters—for now. Their neighborhoods remain largely secure and will be the last to feel the consequences of a dogma that vilifies police. But for the vast majority of Americans, including blacks who value the extraordinary drop in crime over the past 20 years, safety isn’t something to be blithely trashed. As crime rises in big cities, the Democrats will find that they have painted themselves into a corner on law and order—and this isn’t the only issue on which they are doing so.