We reported earlier on how Republicans are continuing to overperform in special election races throughout the country, a development that has caused some sleepless nights for Democrats who are worried such GOP victories are an indicator of things to come in the 2022 midterms.

One of the left’s biggest fears heading into the 2022 races is in how Republicans will again tie them to the Defund the Police movement. It’s a tactic that proved successful on the House side of the election last year as Democrats lost 14 seats, narrowing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s majority significantly.

They’ve spent the last several months trying to shed the label, and one of the ways they’ve been doing it is by laughably pretending that it was Republicans and not Democrats who wanted to defund the police this whole time.

But so far it doesn’t seem to be working. To that point, MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle was hitting the panic button Tuesday on the possibility of a “red wave” in 2022, and the issue she was most worried about was how the rise in crime in Democrat-run cities across America will provide the perfect opportunity for Republicans to hammer home the message about Democrats and their anti-police rhetoric and actions:

We are more than a year out from the midterms, but Democrats are already facing an uphill climb. President Biden just met with Eric Adams, New York City’s Democratic nominee for mayor, after he ran a tough-on-crime campaign.

It comes as cities across the country are grappling with a serious surge in violent crime. Now Republicans like former President Trump are seizing on that, and seizing on that and trying to tie Democrats and their Defund the Police messaging to heading into next year, claiming that messaging is the reason for this spike in crime. It’s very bad news for Democrats, with a razor-thin House majority and a tie in the Senate. And several red states picking up congressional seats after last year’s census.

[…]

Republicans are really, really good at branding, irrelevant of what the truth is, and they’ve got media networks that prop this up, media networks that are considered news. How do you fight this?

She argued animatedly at various points with the guests she had on the show, suggesting that Democrats were not putting in enough effort to counter Republicans.

Watch:

First things first, it’s absolutely hysterical that Ruhle is suggesting Republicans are running with the Defund the Police narrative “irrelevant of what the truth is,” because the truth of the matter is that it’s Democrats who are putting one lie after another out there about who said and did what and when regarding police funding.

The facts are what they are, and they certainly don’t care about Stephanie Ruhle’s feelings. As I explained last week, the Democrat move to turn this around on Republicans and use the Eric Adams model to escape the “defund” label is not going to work for reasons I’ll reiterate below:

House Democrats got stuck with the “Defund the Police” label last year not just for expressing solidarity with BLM radicals, but also because some of those same Democrats used anti-police rhetoric of their own.

Future VP Kamala Harris supported a bail fund for extremist defund-the-police “protesters” last summer who torched entire city blocks. Then-Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden even suggested he was open to “redirecting” police funds elsewhere.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called federal officers “stormtroopers” and part of then-President Trump’s supposed “secret police” force last year when they were sent in to help riot-plagued cities like Portland deal with demonstrators trying to burn down federal courthouses.

In 2020, Squad “leader” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said during the debate in New York City on reallocating police funding that “defunding police means defunding police.” Other “Squad” members have made similar comments and continue to do so.

Lastly, the funding issues for police start at the local level, and city council districts are like state legislative and U.S. House districts, drawn along partisan lines. In “progressive” cities like Portland and Oakland, radical leftists are going to put Defund the Police candidates in local offices and the only way to stop them from implementing that agenda is by having a mayor who will veto any budget that includes gutting the local police force. That’s unlikely to happen.

It’s a pipe dream for Democrats and their enablers in the media like Ms. Ruhle to think there’s a way they can overcome being tied to DtP. From local races, to state races, on up to national races, Republicans are going to rightly drag them all over the place on their support for DtP, and Democrats and their media allies will not able to blame anyone but themselves for it.

That ship, as they say, has long sailed.

Related: New Poll Sounds Major Alarm Bells for Democrats Desperate to Escape ‘Defund the Police’ Label