So regarding the "I think Obama is right about the 'defund the police' slogan being alienating, the message should be marketed better."
Maybe there's some kernel of truth to that. But number one, I'd like to say that someone that is as terrible of a human being as Obama waving his finger at anybody is just kind of inherently cringey to me. I guess that's sort of a cognitive bias on my end though.
Number two: I think that for the vast majority of people alienated by the slogan "defund the police," a BIG part of the reason they don't know what it means is because they don't CARE to know what it means. Many would oppose meaningful police reform whatever way you dress it up or slogan it, it's just easier for them to reject something they're inherently uncomfortable with and predisposed to reject by distorting and grossly oversimplifying it so it becomes a strawman caricature, so they can feel justified in forcefully rejecting it out of hand without further thought.
They don't understand what it actually means because they don't WANT to understand what it means and they'd reject it anyway because meaningfully reforming the police threatens their imagined sense of security. I'm not inclined to waste much time trying to market meaningful police reform to these people in a way that would actually make it palatable to them because I doubt it's possible to do that.
Im tired of the onus being placed on those pushing for progress to make themselves and their ideas appear friendlier and less theatening to suburban white America, especially when doing so in a way that leaves the chance for meaningful reform intact is basically a Sisyphean task. The only way we're going to get change is to either drag suburban white America kicking and screaming along the way, or to fix whatever part of their brains it is that makes them shit their pants in terror at a mere slogan they can't even be bothered to understand, not to pander to them as they current are (because that's an almost guaranteed path to distilling your push for reform to the point of being inconsequential and hollow).