Can someone please explain to me how "defund the police," a little-adopted activist message that appeared at a discrete point of time in the middle of the campaign, caused a near-universal systemic downballot gap, but no one saw any change in polling when it was invented?

"Everyone thought we wanted to defund the police" - but they didn't think this about Joe Biden?

"It was killing us, the polls showed" - then why didn't anyone notice before the actual election result came in?

Of course I was going to say this, but Jamelle got there first: Dem leaders asserted totalistic control over the messaging and campaign strategy for the past three years, deferring almost entirely to the fears of frontliners. THAT's the thing that failed. https://twitter.com/jbouie/status/1327261568380395521