President-elect Joe Biden may have given a good drubbing to incumbent Donald Trump in the election, but he is not above admitting that slogan ‘Defund the police’, cost him votes. 

Biden is said to have told civil rights leaders in a meeting on Tuesday that Democrats’ embrace of the ‘Defund the police’ movement during the election “beat the hell out of us”, New York Post reported on Thursday.

“They’ve already labeled us as being ‘Defund the police.’ Anything we put forward in terms of the organizational structure to change policing — which I promise you, will occur. Promise you,” Post quoted Biden, citing excerpts of the meet obtained by The Intercept. 

“That’s how they beat the living hell out of us across the country, saying that we’re talking about defunding the police. We’re not,” Biden said.

He told the members not get “too far ahead of ourselves” by pursuing his campaign’s promise on reforming the police before the Senate runoff elections in Georgia, New York Post reported.

The Senate runoff elections in Georgia will be held on January 5 and will probably decide which party will hold a majority in the chamber.

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The ‘defund the police’ movement, launched by Black Lives Matter, drew support from a number of progressives like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and was cited as a reason of the Democratic Party’s poor down-ballot performance.