Brian Beutler, in discussing how Democrats should approach ICE abolition politically, makes an observation about professional Democrats and their supporters that has been rattling around in my brain for a while (boldface mine):

But post-Trump, all federal police forces should be substantially demilitarized, and immigration policing should once again become a largely administrative function, enforced by FBI agents and local cops—officers with broad remit, rather than narrow jurisdiction over immigration laws.

This kind of institutional reshuffling would require new legislation, a happy consequence of which would be the legal dissolution of ICE. But, crucially, the legislation would be technocratic in character. It wouldn’t have to be called the ABOLISH ICE Act, and different politicians could sell it in different ways. For a bill like that to gain broad buy-in, it would be incumbent upon activists not to treat the slogan as a purity test….

A big selling point of accountability politics and procedural hardball is that the way Democrats currently approach all kinds of challenges makes people suspect they’ll be too scared to take action when it’s needed. What if it doesn’t poll well?

I want progressives to be clear about what the “Abolish ICE” mantra means—what legislation should and shouldn’t do, what a president can and can’t accomplish unilaterally—and I want Democrats to be determined to act, even if they never recite the slogan. Everyone should be OK with a division of labor within the Democratic tent, where protesters can brandish signs that say ABOLISH ICE, and Democratic politicians can simply promise that there will be a reckoning and reform, and people in both camps know the real score.

The alternative is for an angry base to bully Democrats into answering yes-or-no questions about abolishing ICE, without any depth of meaning, such that they enter forthcoming elections divided, and the reckoning never materializes.

“People in both camps know the real score” is the critical phrase. Rank-and-file Democrats have good reason to not trust professional Democrats, so they insist on what are called “purity tests”, rather than being willing to trust professional Democrats to do the right thing. That’s why many Democratic supporters want elected Democrats to “do something”–push for impeachment of various officials (including Trump), hard lines on budget negotiations, and so on. Somehow, and this is the professionals’ job, they need to convince the rank-and-file that they “know the real score.”