They wanted better police, not less police.

Which most Dems were advocating. Very very few actually were saying "get rid of all of them". They wanted less funding for armored cars, and more for training that didn't teach them the public was the enemy**. The RW propaganda machine latched on to a few radicals holding signs, and ran with it. And people bought it. You are correct; the Dems wanted reforms. And they allowed it to be rebranded by the RW, and then I'm not sure how much reform they were able to get after that.

But they didn't need to hear the words to know that the IRA didn't have much of what they wanted in it.

How could they know that if they didn't "hear the words"? Alex Jones ranting? Makes my point...RW propaganda and lies. They wanted jobs, and the IRA had lots of them. They were "green jobs", but jobs nonetheless. And the analyses I read at the time indicated more jobs than would otherwise occur without the IRA. As I recall, that in part was because building new infrastructure requires more workers than other options for that same spending. To the average person, a job is a job no matter whether it is "green" or not. Most wouldn't care about the climate change angle, only that it was a good job.

IMHO, the Dems need to figure out how to counter the lies, rather than be blindsided by them, and let the Right seize the narrative. Which they do frequently.




**Yes, there is a guy who has made a fortune training police departments that they should regard the public as the enemy. Saw a program about that several years ago when police shootings were rampant.