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Political Memo
No longer demanding cuts to police budgets or straining to show solidarity with protesters, Democrats are taking a far more cautious approach.
June 12, 2025Updated 3:21 p.m. ET
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“Many of the 2020 protests played out in ways that Democrats did not see and they did not foresee,” said former Senator Doug Jones of Alabama, a Democrat who lost his re-election bid that year. At the time, he said, some did not grasp that “once you got to a certain critical mass of protesters, that some bad things were going to happen.”
“I think they do now,” said Mr. Jones, who stressed that Mr. Trump was needlessly escalating tensions. “I also think that they appreciate the fact that any violence is one, is uncalled-for, it needs to be prosecuted. But it’s also playing into the narrative of Donald Trump.”
So far, the demonstrations now — relatively small, scattered and generally peaceful — bear little resemblance to the mass protests of 2020, which in some cases devolved into destructive riots.
