The Overton Window giveth and then it taketh away. 

Not that this is entirely a natural phenomenon. After polls showing that voters were concerned about crime, and that it might define the election, Democrats jumped on the 180 degree bus and drove as far away as they could from the police defunding movement.

Even Minneapolis City Council members who helped put this leftist crackpottery on the national agenda are backing away.

But the other problem is that getting rid of the police is about as popular among black people as Elizabeth Warren. Polls show pretty firm opposition to letting gangs take over. Still, it’s really something hearing a line like this from Al Sharpton.

“To take all policing off [the table] is something that I think a latte liberal may go for as they sit around the Hamptons discussing this as some academic problem,” Sharpton complained during an appearance on Morning Joe. “But people living on the ground need proper policing, yes, we need more resources in different areas like mental health.”

“I’ve said,” he added, “we need to reimagine how we do policing. But when you are talking about the fact … we are in the areas where that is inundated with guns, that has this serious problems of our — of people being given guns that can’t even get a summer program.”

The 1,000+ shootings in New York City are a bit of a hint. There are “super predators” out there and without the cops, who’s going to stop them from shooting up cookouts and parties? Social workers?

You can hear similar sentiments from radicals in positions of authority who understand what the stakes are.

The mayor of New Jersey’s largest city on Thursday labeled ongoing efforts to abolish police departments a “bourgeois liberal” solution for addressing systemic problems that extend far beyond city police departments.

“I think it’s kind of a knee-jerk reaction,” said Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, a progressive Democrat, during a telephone press conference. “I think there needs to be significant reforms … [but] to get rid of the police department — who would respond to calls for service for violence and domestic abuse?”

Baraka makes Sharpton look like a Republican. And yet they’re basically saying the same thing. Defunding police is an idea by “liberals”, by which they mean white lefties who have no connection to inner city realities.