It divides Americans into groups based on gender, skin color, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, trans status, wealth status, union status and more. It makes promises to those groups — or offers a protection racket against the evil “others” — all in a simple exchange for votes. Then it uses the votes of these groups to pursue a progressive world vision often at conflict among the various groups.
That’s been the formula and it certainly has seen its share of success, particularly with the help of a partisan media that can turn a milquetoast squish like Mitt Romney into a pro-slavery Hitler, torturing dogs. But having an evil bogeyman representing the “others” in every election is essential to uniting their disparate groups. And they’re perfectly fine making one up with the help of slobbering media allies.
But there have always been foundational conflicts among these groups. For instance, the Democrat Party is now the party of Big Business, but also of unions, open borders and environmentalists.
On the third of those, Jill Stein and the Green Party are planning another presidential run. A decent argument can be made that Stein cost Hillary Clinton the White House in 2016. The Green Party has actual infrastructure in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Georgia to get the signatures to be on the ballot. We know she can peel off support from one of the disparate groups, environmentalists, in the Democratic Party’s amalgamation.
Another example is that Muslims in Michigan, Minnesota and elsewhere are deeply opposed to abortion and trans issues which are the two defining issues in the Democratic Party’s culture war on America. The Muslim population can absolutely swing elections in Michigan and Minnesota. Muslims won’t likely vote for Republicans in any numbers regarding Hamas — although they theoretically could some day on abortion and transing kids — but it is hard to see them voting for Joe Biden and Democrats in the numbers in which they previously did.
But it is not just Muslims when it comes to Israel’s reaction to vicious Hamas terrorism and hostage-taking. The terrorist attack on Israeli civilians has turned that existing schism between Muslims and the larger Democratic Party into the Grand Canyon.
No less an authority on the Democratic Party than reliable ally Axios writes: “No issue threatens to break President Biden's fragile Democratic coalition like Israel's response to the Hamas terrorist attack…Infighting is spreading, slowly but meaningfully, at every layer of the Democratic Party over Biden's full-throated support of Israel. It runs much deeper than college campus protests or caustic comments from elected officials.”
Here’s how identitarianism is breaking down on this one issue. Liberal Democrat Jews are shocked and angry at so many progressives who they thought were allies are either trying to neuter Israel’s response or outright rooting for Hamas. Some are leaving the party and some have stopped donating.
Also in the Democratic Party, many pro-Palestinian (which largely equates at this point to pro-Hamas or anti-Israel) members are claiming that Biden is enabling literal genocide with his support of Israel. Young voters are particularly in this camp with Muslims and progressives in Congress.
Further evidence of the division in the Democratic ranks is shown by about 20 percent of the DNC’s 300-strong employee base signing their names to a letter asking the Biden Administration for an immediate ceasefire — which is the tactic of the most anti-Israel ranks.
Worth noting is that no such division exists in the Republican Party, which is uniformly united in support of Israel doing what it needs to in order to defend itself.
How does this play out on the ground in a general election? Michigan is probably the most vulnerable as a swing state and has an open Senate seat. It is critical for Democrats, but has the largest Muslim population in America and a large Jewish one. There is likely no way to thread that needle, and certainly not for the bungling Biden Administration.
The Hamas-Israel schism highlights one of the conflict grounds within the Democratic Party. But it is far from the only one as the party is perched to eat itself on multiple fronts. The Republican Party has been going through a form of this for several years now. The Democrats are set up in their fundamental coalition for a potentially more severe disruption.
This all opens doors for Republicans. But the party and its consultant class cannot fall for going after these groups in the same individual identitarian way as Democrats, but must pursue them all with the conservative, traditionalist American principles that made America great in the first place.
