Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed on Atlanta police and 2016 Democratic Party chances

Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed (D) gave his opinion on the Atlanta Police Department treatment of blacks, in light of the recent nation-wide protests against police brutality, during his Sunday appearance on NBC News' "Meet the Press."  Reed also spoke on the program and in an interview with Politico.com about the Democratic Party chances in the upcoming 2016 presidential election cycle.

Reed said on NBC News that the Atlanta Police Department takes racial relations very seriously because of the city's history.  He also commented on how the racial makeup of the local police departments in metro Atlanta reflects the ethnicity of the surrounding communities. This has been named as one of the biggest problems of cities like Ferguson, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis, where the police force is mostly white in a majority black town.  Last August, a white police officer killed a black unarmed teenager in Ferguson, and the grand jury recently decided not to indict the policeman prompting demonstrations across the country.

"I think we do a better job than most," said Reed. "You look at the race composition of our police department, it looks like the communities that we serve… And I think that because of the history of the city of Atlanta, candidly, we work harder at issues of race than other communities do. And it's a part of the DNA of our city being the home of Dr. Martin Luther King. But what I made clear is that Ferguson can happen anywhere. Because it's about the judgment of an individual officer."

The "Meet the Press" commentators also discussed the 2016 elections and which political issues might define it.  Reed named immigration and budget wars as the two factors that will shape the presidential election.

"Yeah, we're going to know in '16 what's going to happen based upon what they're going to do on immigration and what they do on the budget," said Reed. "If Boehner and McConnell get deals on immigration and the budget, and don't let the govement get shut down, then we're going to have a real race in '16. I'm ready for Hillary though."

The mayor also commented in a separate interview with Polico.com on the future of the Democratic Party, for the article "Can Southe Democrats make a comeback?" by James Hohmann published last Friday.  Reed, whom Hohmann calls the "Democratic rising star," is clearly losing his patience with the countless theories and explanations that the Democratic pundits offered last month as reasons for their congressional loses.

Reed, always a straight-talker, said that Democrats need to "stop whining," accept that midterms are always difficult for them, and set their sights on the 2016 elections.

"We have the opportunity in '16 to win the presidency and to rebuild the party," he said. 

While the article included insight from a liberal pollster Tom Jensen of Public Policy Polling (PPP), who said that Democrats lost the South because of President Barack Obama, Reed disagreed with his conclusion.  Right after the 2014 elections, the mayor criticized Democrats for trying to distance themselves from the president, blaming that tactic for the low tuout among minorities.

"Black people can see how the president of the United States is being treated by the party," Reed said. "You're trying to have the Obama coalition when you won't even say the name of the president?"   

In his post-election interviews, Reed also pointed out that Democrats seem to be walking away from the Democratic Party principles.

"To the extent that we try to be Republican Lite, we're gonna lose," he told Politico.