A Hezbollah terrorist fan, 200-odd foreign members of an international criminal gang designated as terrorists by the White House, and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). These are the three major Democratic causes of the moment. Not a single one of them is going to change the party’s fortunes, but that’s where all the attention is.
First: Rasha Alawieh. She’s a doctor on a green card from Lebanon. The Department of Homeland Security deported her last week, and she quickly became a cause célèbre. A judge tried to stop the action, and Democrat-aligned newspapers and television outlets alike highlighted her case, medical expertise, and ties to Brown University as examples of exactly the type of immigrant America wants to welcome.
Every single sign points to the inner-party warnings against the radicals falling on deaf ears.
Remember when hijab-clad Linda Sarsour and Munira Ahmed were the faces of the 2017 feminist “resistance” to President Donald Trump? Sarsour was eventually purged from the Women’s March board because of
alleged anti-Semitism, and Ahmed didn’t even actually wear a hijab — she just posed in one for a photo shoot at Ground Zero in Manhattan.
Looks like Alawieh runs in similar circles. Turns out when she flew across the Atlantic Ocean, she attended the memorial for the murderous Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Her phone reportedly contained numerous pictures of Nasrallah, the leader of Iran, and the Hezbollah “martyrs.” Not exactly the kind of champion to bring working-class voters back into the fold.
And then there are the boys from Tren de Aragua, an international street gang from Venezuela. The administration had them deported under a law signed in 1798 by John Adams. It’s a national security law, but a district judge decided he was actually in charge of the airplane and ordered it to return from over the Gulf on a flight to El Salvador.
The administration does not recognize the district judge’s authority to tell its airplanes where to go, so now violent foreign criminals are the new thing. Sure, they’re trying to make it
an argument about process, but the pictures and videos of the hardened, tattooed gangsters, again, aren’t the sort of images to bring working-class voters back into the fold.
And then there’s Schumer, who is in heap-big trouble for capitulating too early on last week’s shutdown fight. Never mind that the Democrats were cruising for a loss, and never mind that they could not have won a shutdown fight if they had one — the Senate Democrat leader didn’t go through the proper steps to fight back, and now he’s got to go.
Activists
called for his resignation from leadership. An MSNBC host announced on TV that she’s quitting the Democratic Party. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) is reportedly mulling a primary challenge. Schumer had to cancel his book tour on anti-Semitism in America over “security concerns.” Even less liberal Democratic governors like Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro criticized him.
This is the guy who is supposed to be in charge, the same one who refused to lead Democrats into a costly and losing battle that would confuse their floundering attempts to brand themselves as the responsible adults in Washington. And they want him out. It’s difficult to imagine Schumer as the man to bring working-class voters back into the fold, but there’s also no shot his expulsion improves Democrats’ fortunes in the polls. And the polls are
abysmal.
One, released Sunday from
CNN and SSRS, gave Democrats a 29% national approval rating (with 54% holding an unfavorable view of Team Blue). An NBC poll released the same day pegged the favorables at 29%. Both polls were taken before Friday’s Schumer brouhaha.
These numbers are apparently
a record low for Democrats, and it’s hard not to see why. That’s why you have Democratic politicians like California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton trying to pivot back to issues voters actually agree on, instead of just pandering to radical activists.
On Tuesday, the embattled Senate minority leader went on “The View” to make the case for why “I should be the leader.” He cited winning elections and keeping a fractious caucus in line, and he went on so long that the show had to play him off for the commercial break.
Schumer isn’t the only one Democrats are going to have to play offstage if they can’t get their act together. And so far, every single sign points to the inner-party warnings against the radicals falling on deaf ears.
Politico: The long and relentless arc of Chuck Schumer
The Spectator: How Republicans should capitalize on Chuck Schumer’s weakness
The Daily Caller News Foundation: ‘The party is in shambles’: Charlamagne dismisses Rep. Jasmine Crockett’s defense of Dems
Politico: Schumer is doing damage control. It isn’t working.
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Opinion & analysis, Politics
