Obama’s criticism of the “Defund the police” slogan reveals a rift between American “leftists” and “liberals”

This appeared in The Millennial Source

With Biden winning the election and Obama baring his party’s internal divisions, the next four years could see an even greater split in the American Left.

During a press interview for his latest memoir, “A Promised Land,” former-President Barack Obama angered many on the political left by criticizing the activist phrase “Defund the police.” Obama called the phrase a “snappy slogan” that “[loses] a big audience the minute you say it, which makes it a lot less likely that you’re actually going to get the changes you want done.”

“ Defund the police,” both as a political rallying cry and social media hashtag, emerged this summer in response to police killings of Black individuals and the resulting Black Lives Matter protests. Calls for reforming police departments and the entire policing system has strong support among left-leaning Americans, though such reforms are resisted by conservatives.

Yet, even within America’s political Left, there is significant division. This divide is split between “liberals,” represented by mainstream Democrats like Obama and President-elect Joe Biden, and “leftists” (or “progressives”) who back the independent Senator…