Boston Herald

OBAMA SETS OFF SQUAD WITH ‘DEFUND’ DILEMMA

- Joe BATTENFELD

‘Lives are at stake daily so I’m out of patience with critiques of the language of activists. Whatever a grieving family says is their truth. And I’ll never stop fighting for their justice and healing.’

U.S. REP. AYANNA PRESSLEY

Former President Barack Obama delivered a jarring jab to AOC, Rep. Ayanna Pressley and the rest of the Squad that served to further marginaliz­e the far left as its growing battle with moderates tears apart the Democratic Party.

The new spat came after Obama criticized the “defund the police” backers for losing voters.

“I guess you can use a snappy slogan like defund the police but you know you’ve lost a big audience the minute you say it, which makes it a lot less likely you’re going to actually get the changes you want done,” Obama said on the “Good Luck America” Snapchat.

The former president’s decision to weigh in is likely to push the far left even further out of the mainstream of the party as self-styled moderate Joe Biden prepares to take office.

Rep. Alexandria OcasioCort­ez, Pressley and other squad members fired back Wednesday in a sign the split between liberals and moderates will continue when Biden takes over.

“Lives are at stake daily so I’m out of patience with critiques of the language of activists,” Pressley said. “Whatever a grieving family says is their truth. And I’ll never stop fighting for their justice and healing.”

“It’s not a slogan but a policy demand,” U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, a member of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s “Squad” tweeted. “And centering the demand for equitable investment­s and budgets for communitie­s across the country gets us progress and safety.”

Obama gets high bravery points for taking on the far left. It’s the sharpest criticism yet he’s delivered and shows how deep the divide is over the confrontat­ional “defund the police” movement.

Even though Joe Biden won the election, a lot of moderate Democrat lawmakers lost, and that’s creating deep, post-election fissures within the party over how it should proceed in the Biden administra­tion era.

Obama clearly signaled that the party needs to appeal to more mainstream Democrats to hold its advantage in the U.S. House.

But progressiv­es and the Squad just as clearly signaled that they won’t cede the fight just because Obama is on the other side.

‘The thing that critics of activists don’t get is that they tried playing the ‘polite language’ policy game and all it did was make them easier to ignore,” OcasioCort­ez tweeted. ‘It wasn’t until they made folks uncomforta­ble that there was traction to do ANYTHING even if it wasn’t their full demands.”

Sure, what does Obama know? He only won two presidenti­al elections and became America’s first African American president.

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 ?? ToP, niColAuS CzArneCki / herAlD STAff file; ABove, AP file ?? NO FUN IN DEFUNDING: President Obama drew sharp rebukes from Rep. Ayanna Pressley, top left, and the other members of the Squad when he said calling for defunding the police costs Dems voters.
ToP, niColAuS CzArneCki / herAlD STAff file; ABove, AP file NO FUN IN DEFUNDING: President Obama drew sharp rebukes from Rep. Ayanna Pressley, top left, and the other members of the Squad when he said calling for defunding the police costs Dems voters.
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