When Missouri Democratic Congresswoman and squad member Cori Bush said she was still going all-in on defunding the police, the rest of her party immediately began to get nervous. You could see some of the more politically savvy Democrats edging away from Bush, but this weekend Speaker Nancy Pelosi decided to publicly hang her out to dry. During a stop on her tour of the Sunday morning shows, Pelosi put out the word in no uncertain terms, essentially declaring that Cori Bush is on her own. The “defund the police” message is not part of the Democratic Party platform in 2022. Of course, she tried to be a bit more gentle by tossing in the phrase, “with all the respect in the world for Cori Bush.” (ABC News)

“With all the respect in the world for [Rep.] Cori Bush, that is not the position of the Democratic Party,” Pelosi said on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday, referring to the Missouri Democrat who said last week she will continue to use the phrase in midterm messaging. “Make no mistake: Community safety is our responsibility.”

Pelosi went a beat further, paraphrasing Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y., a 33-year-old freshman House member whom Pelosi described as “way on the left”: “Defund the police is dead.”

The comments came just 10 days after President Joe Biden traveled to New York City to associate himself with the new crime-fighting efforts of Mayor Eric Adams, a former police officer. At that event, Biden declared, “The answer is not to defund the police.”

Apparently, almost anyone can eventually smell the coffee beginning to burn after a sufficient number of whacks with the clue bat. (Unless your name happens to be Cori Bush.) As noted in the excerpt above, even Joe Biden was handed a memo during his recent trip to New York City when he declared that defunding the police “is not the answer.”

It’s somewhat surprising that at least some of the members of the House Progressive Caucus haven’t been coming to Bush’s defense on this. It’s not as if they haven’t already been fighting a Democratic civil war for the past year anyway. And yet, not even the rest of the squad has stepped up to join Bush in continuing the call to defund or abolish the police.

The reason for that is probably the reality that this isn’t a left vs right or progressive vs moderate debate. This is just common sense being pitted against cluelessness. The early campaign messages in the primaries have demonstrated that the 2022 midterms are shaping up to be a law and order election. The crime rates have been rising too quickly and there have already been far too many funerals for police officers lost in the line of duty this year. It’s not a case where people are beginning to notice. They’ve already become fully aware and they want something done about it.

We were already seeing that theme taking shape in last November’s elections. In New York City, Eric Adams ran in the Democratic primary to be Gotham’s mayor on a promise to refund the police, not defund them. He was running against several other Democrats who were still on the defund bandwagon and he defeated them handily.

Could this come back to bite Cori Bush, who has now been abandoned by her party on this issue? She’s not going to lose a general election bid against a Republican in a D+29 district. But keep in mind that when she won an upset primary victory over Lacy Clay in 2020, she still only carried 48.5% of the vote. She wasn’t what you would call the “consensus candidate” even when she prevailed. And if her district is also having problems with crime and violence, the voters might start looking elsewhere for a more sensible candidate.