"And I do think — the Democrats, I think, have come to understand, they somehow got on the wrong side of order."

"And they got somehow attached, even though Biden is not actually attached to it, to the idea of defunding the police. And they need to somehow make some gesture to show they understand the insecurity of the American people. The country has been through an anxious time, with the pandemic, economic turmoil. There's just this great sense of fear, of fear and a sense of unsafety, physical unsafety, from the pandemic and everything else. And somehow they have to address that. Now, a lot of law and order talk is code word for racism. There's no question about that. But I think a lot of it is not. And I think Democrats would be making a mistake if they just said, oh, you're all just a bunch of cryptoracists. I think people have legitimate concerns about expressing their opinion safely, about living safely. And so I think Biden really would do well by himself to somehow address this issue and say, no, we're for policing, we want to reform policing, but we will keep you safe. This is just an elemental issue of politics stretching back 3,000 or 4,000 years...."

Said David Brooks (on PBS Newshour last night).

They need to somehow make some gesture....

They need more than some gesture! Show some leadership. Why should they be trusted when they've been running the cities with the worst problems with crime and the police?

"Cryptoracist" is a useful word. Reminiscent of "cryptofascist" (which which is what Gore Vidal said he meant to call William F. Buckley when he called him a "crypto-Nazi"). Brooks's use of "cryptoracist" is to mock the notion that there are lots of such people out there.

The OED has an entry for "crypto" as a free-standing word: "A person who secretly belongs to or supports a particular political group; esp. a crypto-communist." There's a Churchill quote: "Pacifists or ‘cryptos’, or that breed of degenerate intellectuals."