So, it seems that while the Left is appalled by President Trump’s tweets targeting the Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and the rest of the Leninist Girl Scout Troop, what else is new, there’s also some blowback against Democratic leaders. Oh yes, the narrative goes, it may have happened at a Trump rally, but it was the Democrats who paved the way. A Washington Post editorial writer first lobbed this grenade, but now the Huffington Post is getting into the game. Zack Carter, senior reporter for HuffPost detailed how we got to “send her back,” which was chanted at Trump’s rally in North Carolina this week. Simply put, he asked which side are the Democrats on in this fight:
HuffPost puts blame for the 'send her back' chant at the feet of House Dems leadership pic.twitter.com/TiX8El8E6j
— Sam Stein (@samstein) July 18, 2019
At least partially
— Sam Stein (@samstein) July 18, 2019
What a joke.
— Neera Tanden (@neeratanden) July 18, 2019
Pelosi spent much of the past month painting targets on the backs of Omar and three other freshman Democrats: Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.). She badmouthed them to New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, and when they fired back, she held caucus meeting to denounce them again for tweeting their complaints. Two days later, House leadership violated this new no-mean-tweeting rule to attack Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff from the official @HouseDemocrats Twitter feed.
Trump, correctly reading the room, pounced again. He attacked all four in a racist Twitter rant on Sunday, telling them to “go back to their country.” When Pelosi finally got her members to vote for a resolution condemning the president’s remarks, a crop of House Democrats immediately went to CNN’s Jake Tapper to complain under cover of anonymity that they really hated having to vote about Trump and were still mad at the Squad.
Their complaints? They wish Ocasio-Cortez hadn’t described the prison camps at the border where children are dying and refugees are being ritually humiliated as “concentration camps.” One Democrat complained that singling out Trump for criticism was unfair when Democrats had failed to legislatively condemn Omar back in the spring. “We couldn’t even bring ourselves to have a resolution exclusively condemning anti-Semitism uttered by one of those members,” this brave Democrat told Tapper, “but we leapt to their defense here.”
Once again, Trump got the message. Shortly after Tapper posted all of this stuff, Trump held a rally in North Carolina where he assailed all four House members, inspiring a terrifying chant of “Send her back!” referring to Omar.
Democrats aren’t going to agree on everything. No political party ever does. They have ideological disputes, generational divides, whatever. But House Democrats haven’t been debating. For months now, they’ve been directing a fascist feeding frenzy toward four women of color.
Yeah, but what’s missing from the House Democrats spilling their guts to Tapper is that these four are nationalizing the races, which isn’t good for swing House districts whose voters overwhelmingly view these far-left clowns negatively. Trump forced the Democrats to re-embrace these women. It was a brilliant move. Yes, some make take this view that Pelosi and company are traitors for slamming them for weeks, but it was for a very good reason: they’re toxic to the party. Any place that isn’t D+40, and that’s most of the country, does not like them or their agenda. Trump just executed a face-lift on the Democrats and outmaneuvered everyone in the process. You cannot slam Trump’s rally or his tweets if your side cannot call out explicit forms of anti-Semitism. So, in a way, there would have been short-term gain from the Democratic infighting, but its effects would not have been as widespread if Pelosi has been successful in her attempts to put some distance between the rest of the caucus and these four gals. Trump nuked that. They’re getting more exposure. And the rift between them and Pelosi will re-open. They’re bomb throwers who are against the pragmatic approach of the Democratic leadership. This truce won’t last for long and the fact that it’s even called that is a joke; Pelosi and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have no relationship, to begin with. Oh, and AOC and her crew at Justice Democrats are totally fine with challenging incumbent Democrats, so that’s another case of heartburn that will hit the Democratic Party.