There’s no reason to be talking about defunding police when only 18 percent of Americans support the concept overall — including just 28 percent of Black Americans and 34 percent of Democrats. What has been central to President Biden’s success is that he does popular things. That’s how you get elected and keep your approval rating above 50 percent. As crime continues to soar in major cities, it is now a top issue in the New York City mayoral race, and I cringe every time I hear that terrible slogan. Second, so-called “cancel culture” is becoming something more than right-wing complaining. According to recent polling, over 60 percent of Americans see the cancel culture as a threat, including a growing number of Democrats. Just a few years ago, who even knew what cancel culture was? Today, nearly everybody does and 48 percent of Democrats say they see it as a problem, compared to 52 percent who don’t. That’s way too slim of a margin to ignore. And I can understand why it’s becoming more and more of a hot-button issue. We have European publishers who have been fired as translators of Amanda Gorman’s poetry because the translator wasn’t a Black woman, even though Gorman picked the white Dutch translator herself. We have seen employees at Smith College get called racists for following school protocols and asking a Black student to leave an area that was off limits to everyone. And one of the most egregious examples is that of Mimi Groves, a white teenager who used a racial slur in a Snapchat video when she was 15, apologized and still had her college admission revoked after a fellow student decided to make her past actions a current problem.